At Nadine Menendez trial, prosecutors portray her as ‘partner in crime’ with her convicted husband

NEW YORK (AP) — Nadine Menendez and her prison-bound husband — former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez — were “partners in crime,” a prosecutor told a jury Monday as opening statements began in her trial over allegations that the power couple accepted bribes of cash and gold bars.

The longtime senator was convicted last year of accepting bribes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from three New Jersey businessmen. Now a new jury will hear much of the same evidence about Nadine Menendez, 58, after her trial was postponed when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz said Nadine Menendez “did the dirty work” for the 71-year-old New Jersey Democrat, who is to report to prison in June to begin an 11-year sentence.

Defense attorney Barry Coburn told jurors they will have to exonerate Nadine Menendez because there will be an “absolute, utter failure of proof in this case.”

The government’s characterization was “grossly inaccurate for Nadine Menendez,” and descriptions of the evidence by a prosecutor was “nefarious,” Coburn said.

Nadine Menendez has pleaded not guilty to charges she participated in the bribery scheme that resulted in her husband’s conviction.

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Born in Lebanon of Armenian descent, she began dating the senator in early 2018 and soon joined a bribery scheme involving at least one businessman she had known for years separately from her soon-to-be husband, Pomerantz said.

The couple met at an IHOP in Union City, New Jersey, when she was known as Nadine Arslanian, and became engaged during a visit to India’s Taj Mahal shrine in October 2019. They married a year later.

Nadine Menendez “worked together with her boyfriend and then husband Robert Menendez to put his power up for sale,” the prosecutor said. She said it was possible because Menendez held important positions with the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Senate career that began in 2006.

“This was not politics as usual. This was politics for profit,” Pomerantz said. “They were on the take.”

Menendez was not present in court Monday, but expressed displeasure on social media last week that his wife was facing trial soon after undergoing breast cancer reconstructive surgery.

“Only the arrogance of the SDNY can be so cruel and inhumane,” Menendez added, referring to the Southern District of New York, where her trial is taking place. “They should let her fully recover!”

Pomerantz said the couple was bribed in return for favors including using the senator’s influence to help businessman Wael Hana, a longtime friend of Nadine Menendez, protect a monopoly over the inspection of meat exported to Egypt. Those dealings led Bob Menendez to be convicted at trial of acting as a foreign agent for Egypt.

Pomerantz said Hana and the Menendez couple met “again and again” with Egyptian officials from 2018 through 2022, with the senator using his wife as a conduit to deliver sensitive non-public information to Egyptian officials.

The prosecutor said Nadine Menendez arranged for the senator to secretly help Egypt draft a letter to persuade other senators to support aid to Egypt despite their concerns about the country’s human rights record.

Hana and a New Jersey real estate developer, Fred Daibes, were convicted last year along with the senator. Hana received eight years in prison while Daibes got seven years behind bars. A third businessman pleaded guilty and is expected to testify against Nadine Menendez, as he did against her husband.

Menendez resigned from the Senate after his conviction.

Throughout his two-month trial, Nadine Menendez was mentioned repeatedly for her dealings with the businessmen, including extensive text communications. One of them testified he bought her a luxury car after the senator tried to get New Jersey prosecutors to drop a criminal investigation involving one of his associates.

The first witness on Monday, FBI Agent Aristotelis Kougemitros, described a 2002 raid on the Menendez home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, that found more than $100,000 in gold bars and over $480,000 in cash in a safe, shoe boxes and envelopes stuffed in coat pockets and boots.

In the garage, he said, was a $60,000 black Mercedes-Benz convertible.

During her opening statement, Pomerantz said the car, paid for with a $15,000 down payment and monthly payments from the bribe-giving businessmen, was delivered because Nadine Menendez “didn’t want just any old car. She wanted a brand new Mercedes convertible.”

Bob Menendez said at trial that the gold belonged to his wife and the cash resulted from his habit of hoarding money after his parents fled Cuba in 1951 with only what they had hidden in a grandfather clock.