Federal prosecutors spent the past two days laying out the origin story of Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-NJ) alleged yearslong bribery scheme to a Manhattan jury.
The government claims Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez’s, dire financial situation was the catalyst for what they said was a five-year bribery conspiracy.
A federal indictment accuses the one-time power couple of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including gold bars, furniture, and wads of cash, in exchange for the Democratic senator’s willingness to grease the wheels in deals that benefited three businessmen and the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
Menendez is on trial with two of the New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes. They, along with the Menendezes, have pleaded not guilty. A third man has pleaded guilty and is scheduled to testify. Nadine Menendez’s trial was postponed until July after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The senator’s strategy so far has been to blame his wife, who has been painted as a femme fatale and the common denominator in all of the allegations against him.
Through a multi-daylong presentation of communications, which included hundreds of texts, emails, and phone calls, prosecutors attempted to show Nadine Menendez was in financial freefall before connecting with her now-husband. They sought to trace the relationship between Menendez and his wife, which began in 2018.
Prosecutors sought to show the relationship coincided with a bribery scheme that later led Menendez to help Hana, a Coptic Christian, corner the halal meat market. Specifically, Menendez helped Hana win an exclusive contract with Egypt to certify all meat exported there from the United States as meeting religious requirements, while aiding two other businessmen financially and by helping them obtain favorable results with criminal cases in New Jersey.
Jurors saw some text messages Wednesday in which Menendez and his wife, then known as Nadine Arslanian, exchanged.
“You can never lose me because I will never let go,” one message from Arslanian to the senator said.
Other communications during the summer of 2019 show Arslanian was in serious risk of losing her Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, home after failing to make $20,000 in mortgage payments. Hana came to the rescue and paid the money so she could stay in her home. After marrying Menendez, he moved in too. Prosecutors argued that the money Hana put up was actually made to help him secure the halal deal.
Menendez has repeatedly said through his lawyers that his wife kept him in the dark about her financial troubles and he did nothing illegal.
The trial is expected to last for at least another month. It is unclear if Menendez will take the stand.
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Menendez was forced to step down from his role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after he was arrested and charged. He has said if he is acquitted, he will run in November as an independent.
On Thursday, NBC News reported that Menendez has secured the 800 signatures needed to appear on the November ballot as an independent, though his campaign hopes to collect thousands more by the June 4 deadline.
