The wife of former New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez was sentenced by a federal judge to four and half years in prison on Thursday.
Nadine Menendez, 58, pleaded for mercy by saying her husband had “strung her like a puppet” during a yearslong conspiracy and in its aftermath.
She is now the fourth person convicted and facing a multi-year federal prison sentence for a sprawling scheme that brought down one of the nation’s most powerful senators.
Her sentence, handed down in a Manhattan courtroom by U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Stein, came after federal prosecutors asked for at least a seven-year sentence.
Her attorneys argued that because of health issues, a lengthy sentence means she would die in prison and asked for sentence of 12 months and one day.
But the most dramatic moments were her retelling of interactions with her husband, who she said she met after a string of abusive relationships when he was arguably at the apex of his political power — atop the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She called him “my god” because of how powerful he was and how well he treated her compared to other men she’d dated. She said she was blind and foolish, though, and now “the blindfold is off.”
“I was wrong about my husband,” she told Stein.
Bob Menendez is in prison on an 11-year sentence while two New Jersey businesspeople, Fred Daibes and Wael “Will” Hanna,” are serving seven- and eight-year sentences, respectively. A third businessperson who pleaded guilty to bribing the senator and his wife cooperated with the government and has yet to be sentenced.
Together, the group is accused of twisting the senator’s power to their ends: his influence in exchange for gold bars, wads of cash and a Mercedes convertible for him and his wife.
Nadine Menendez was, in some ways, at the center of the whole case. Even though all the bribes were meant to buy his sway, prosecutors said she did the dirty work, acting as go-between as the couple sold his power.
During the senator’s trial — which happened before hers because of a breast cancer diagnosis that delayed her ability to stand trial — his attorneys adopted a legal strategy that threw her under the bus.
Nadine Menendez said that even as that was playing out in public, the two enjoyed their life together, having breakfasts and hanging out. But she said his attorneys were telling her that their strategy was to help him beat his charges because, if the senator walked, federal prosecutors would drop the case against her.
Their aggressive defense strategy failed and a jury convicted the senator on every count.
Then a separate jury found her guilty on every charge against her.
Nadine Menendez and her attorney Sarah Krissoff argued for a lenient sentence because of her childhood in war-torn Lebanon; a history of abusive relationships, including one domestic violence incident that left her with what Krissoff described as brain damage; and a relative lack of power compared to the other men involved in the scheme.
Federal prosecutor Lara Pomerantz said Nadine Menendez was responsible for her own “extensive, deliberate and egregious conduct.”
Stein gave her 10 months to report to prison.
Though Nadine Menendez has been cancer-free for a year, she needs a series of surgeries to repair damage done in prior procedures, according to her attorney. Those could entail operations and months of recovery that federal prison cannot easily provide.
After Stein handed down the sentence, Krissoff then asked the judge to help get the Bureau of Prisons to allow Nadine Menendez to visit her husband.
Amid a gaggle of press outside the courthouse, Nadine Menendez said she did not plan to divorce him.
Last month, the imprisoned former senator used a letter written on her behalf to throw his defense team under the bus for throwing her under the bus.
“To suggest that Nadine was money hungry or in financial need, and therefore would solicit others for help, is simply wrong,” he wrote. She began dating the senator as both were getting free of separate relationships. She had been in what her attorney described as “very horrific relationships” and had been beaten when she stepped out of line.
Menendez’s previous fiancée left him just before a separate 2017 corruption trial ended in a hung jury. Not long after the DOJ dropped those charges in early 2018, he struck up a relationship with Nadine, who he would later marry. When he proposed to her in fall 2019, he burst into song with a show tune about how “towers of gold are still too little.”
By then, prosecutors said, the pair were in the midst of the bribery scheme that eventually involved acting as an agent of the Egyptian government and doing favors for Daibes as he sought to close a deal with an investor who was part of the Qatari royal family and beat separate bank fraud charges.
During the previous sentencings, which took place in January, her co-conspirators took different approaches in speeches to Stein.
Her husband was tearful inside the courtroom before he was sentenced, then took to the courthouse steps after to trash federal prosecutors.
Daibes, a major developer who is credited with building up the city of Edgewater, New Jersey, was sentenced to seven years in prison after he tearfully pleaded for mercy, described his rags-to-riches story, which began in a refugee camp in Lebanon, and what would happen if he was separated from his 30-year-old autistic son.
Hana gave an audacious and stunning speech to Stein that questioned the fairness of the American justice system.
All four co-defendants are appealing their convictions or plan to.
Some of the issues Bob Menendez is raising are likely to intrigue appeals court judges. He argues that prosecutors breached a form of immunity members of Congress are given by the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause.
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