Nadine Menendez sentenced to 54 months in prison for bribery scheme with ex-senator husband

MANHATTAN (CN) — Nadine Menendez will serve four-and-a-half years behind bars, a federal judge ruled Thursday, for her role in a sprawling international bribery scheme that leveraged the influence of her husband, disgraced former U.S. Senator Robert Menendez.

The 58-year-old tearfully addressed the court for several minutes before being sentenced. She attributed her actions in part to past abusive relationships — her lawyer said she suffered a traumatic brain injury from domestic violence in 2009 — as well as blind loyalty to her husband, who she said was “my god.”

“I felt safe, followed him through life,” Nadine Menendez said of the ex-senator. “He was one of the most powerful men in the most powerful country on Earth. There was no way he would lead me astray or ask me to do anything illegal, or so I thought.”

During his own trial, Robert Menendez pinned the crimes on his wife, who his defense attorneys framed as greedy and manipulative. Now a convicted felon, Robert Menendez changed his tune in a sentencing submission from this summer, claiming that he “didn’t fully preview” what his defense attorneys were going to say about his wife prior to trial.

“I put my life in his hands and he strung me like a puppet,” Nadine Menendez said Thursday, adding that her husband promised that if he was acquitted her case would “vanish.”

But Robert Menendez wasn’t acquitted. And while the sentencing judge said he didn’t agree with depictions of Nadine Menendez as the ringleader of the scheme, she also wasn’t the innocent bystander she claimed.

“You knew what you were doing,” U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein, a Bill Clinton appointee, said. “You were always purposeful.”

Stein said he believed his 54-month sentence was a lenient one, given the facts of the case.

“You set up meetings, you initiated actions, you involved others,” the judge said. “You knew what you were doing throughout. I’m not going to go through chapter and verse of what you did, but you were definitely a manager or supervisor in the conspiracy and not a subordinate actor.”

Nadine Menendez won’t have to surrender to prison until July 10, 2026, to make way for a series of medical procedures she plans to undergo over the next several months. Her legal team indicated that they’d be appealing her conviction.

Despite her depiction of her husband in court on Thursday, she told reporters outside the courthouse that she does not plan on divorcing him.

“The defendant and her partner in crime, former Senator Robert Menendez, engaged in the most brazen form of public corruption — gold bars, cash, and a luxury car in exchange for a Senator’s power,” Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. “Today’s sentence sends an important message: our elected officials are not for sale.”

Nadine Menendez was sentenced nearly nine months after her husband, a longtime New Jersey Democratic congressman, received 11 years of prison time for taking bribes from foreign interests, including the Egyptian government and the Qatari royal family.

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York sought seven years, arguing she “did not commit bribery reluctantly, fleetingly or on a small scale,” pushing back on her defense’s claims.

Robert and Nadine Menendez were indicted together in 2023 after investigators discovered gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash — much of it stuffed in clothing bearing the senator’s name — inside their New Jersey home.

Prosecutors said the items were bribes the senator accepted in exchange for corrupt favors, including protecting a businessman’s monopoly, blocking the nomination of a U.S. attorney in New Jersey and providing the Egyptian government with sensitive U.S. information.

Nadine Menendez acted as a go-between for her husband and those seeking to buy his influence. One witness testified in April that she personally picked out the Mercedes-Benz convertible she would receive as a bribe, in exchange for Robert Menendez trying to halt a statewide probe into the man’s trucking business.

“She told me she wanted a Mercedes-Benz,” Jose Uribe, who testified for the government pursuant to a plea deal, said at Nadine Menendez’s trial.

Although indicted alongside her husband, Nadine Menendez was not tried with him. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and could not sit through Robert Menendez’s trial last year, where two co-defendants faced bribery charges.

Her own trial, held this spring, drew far less attention. Prosecutors presented much of the same evidence, but as the sole defendant, she often sat alone at the defense table during courtroom breaks.

Robert Menendez didn’t once make an appearance at that trial. Following the three-week trial, a federal jury found Nadine Menendez guilty on all 15 charges against her, including bribery, wire fraud and obstruction of justice. The trial judge later rejected her efforts to overturn that verdict, finding prosecutors’ evidence to be “more than sufficient” to back up the jury’s findings.

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