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Nadine Menendez was convicted Monday of cooking up a crooked scheme with her disgraced husband — ex-New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez — to pocket gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz and other bribes.
Jurors found the 58-year-old Englewood Cliffs resident guilty of federal bribery and conspiracy charges following about eight hours of deliberations over two days.
It came months after Bob Menendez’s conviction for his role in the sprawling corruption web, in which the couple leveraged his lofty Senate post to line both of their pockets.
Nadine Menendez began scheming to collect bribes shortly after starting to date Bob, who at the time was a powerful U.S. senator, prosecutors say. APThe Garden State Democrat stepped down from his Senate post and is set to report to prison in June to serve an 11-year sentence.
Nadine was the “go-between” connecting Bob with businessmen who funneled bribes to them from the Egyptian and Qatari governments, Manhattan federal prosecutors said.
In exchange, the pilloried pol leveraged his powerful post as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to lobby colleagues to unfreeze $300 million in Egyptian military aid that had been held up due to human rights concerns, and dole out other valuable favors, jurors heard at a one-month trial.
“What else can the love of my life do for you?” Nadine told one Egyptian official while sitting alongside her cigar-puffing hubby during a May 2019 dinner at Morton’s Steakhouse, evidence revealed.
Former Garden State insurance broker Jose Uribe testified that he bribed Nadine with a new Mercedes-Benz C-300 in exchange for her husband’s help shutting down a criminal probe.
“Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes,” Nadine texted her husband after receiving the first payment toward the new car, using the French phrase for “love of my life.”
FBI agents who raided the couple’s Englewood Hills home found the luxury car parked in their garage, and more than $150,000 in gold bars stored inside Nadine’s safe. Jurors saw more than $400,000 in cash stuffed into envelopes and strewn across the home, including inside the former senator’s official government windbreaker.
As the bribes poured in from businessmen Uribe, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, Nadine “put the senator’s power up for sale,” prosecutors said, calling her his “partner in crime.”
Nadine, who was charged with pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bribes, brought a cheap Amazon prime tote bag to opening statements at the trial. Steven Hirsch“The defendant helped Robert Menendez put his power up for grabs,” prosecutor Paul Monteleoni said in his closing statement. “You saw again and again a clear pattern of corruption.”
Nadine began dating the senator in early 2018, when she was known as Nadine Arslanian. The scheme began soon afterward, including with Hana, whom Nadine had known for years before meeting her husband. Nadine and Bob married in 2020.
Nadine Menendez faces the possibility of decades in prison, but she’s more likely to be hit with a sentence somewhere in the range of the 11 years behind bars imposed on her husband in January.
Bob Menendez convinced Judge Sidney Stein to delay his prison stint until June 6 to that he could “assist” his wife during her trial — but the convicted felon’s support did not include attending her trial in person.
Nadine had been originally set to go on trial together with her husband, Hana, and Daibes, who were all convicted, but her trial was pushed back after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Hana was sentenced to serve eight years in prison, and Daibes was hit with a 7-year-sentence.
Uribe will be sentenced later this year after pleading guilty and cooperated with the government.
Nadine’s lawyer argued unsuccessfully at trial that the feds did not prove that she had the required “knowledge” or “intent” to commit the crimes.
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