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MANHATTAN (CN) — Nadine Menendez, wife of disgraced former U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, hand-picked the Mercedes-Benz given to her as a bribe for peddling her husband’s political influence, according to the New Jersey businessman who financed the car.
Cooperating witness Jose Uribe already admitted to engaging in a scheme to bribe Robert, a New Jersey Democrat, to get state investigators off his back. But contrary to what her defense lawyers claim, Nadine took more than a sideline role in the plot, Uribe told a federal jury this week.
In fact, she was the one who picked out the $60,000 Mercedes C-300 convertible for which, prosecutors say, she traded the senator’s time and power.
“She told me she wanted a Mercedes-Benz,” Uribe told jurors on Monday.
Uribe was a Dominican-born trucking mogul in New Jersey whose insurance company was facing a fraud probe from the state’s attorney general that threatened his family-run businesses. He told jurors that, in 2018, he leaned on Nadine as a longtime friend to bribe his way to Robert’s ear.
The price was monthly payments toward Nadine’s new Mercedes, which Uribe said he helped her pick out when she expressed a need for a new vehicle. He told the court that he agreed to finance the car during a phone call with the senator’s then-girlfriend, whom he referred to as his “hermana.”
“I expressed to Nadine my passion for Mercedes,” Uribe said. “I had been driving Mercedes for a number of years.”
Uribe testified that Nadine was “the one person who can get me in touch with Senator Menendez, the person who has the power and influence to get this investigation stopped and killed.”
“I was willing to do anything I can, and that was providing a car to Nadine to protect my family,” he said.
After he agreed to get her the car, Nadine told Uribe that “she would be in touch with the senator.” In text messages, Uribe pleaded with Nadine to “please don’t forget about me.”
“You will never be forgotten. I promise,” Nadine replied.
She subsequently got Uribe several face-to-face meetings with Robert at a bar, at a restaurant and even at the couple’s Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, home in 2019 — where the senator supposedly asked Uribe to write down the names of the parties being investigated so he could look into them.
Uribe said Robert never acknowledged that he was the one paying for Nadine’s Mercedes, but he had no doubts that the senator knew he was behind the payments.
“If the senator didn’t know that I am the person making those payments, I don’t think the senator would be open to meeting with me … and listening to my concerns and worries,” Uribe said Tuesday.
Defense attorney Barry Cobum made a seeming attempt to pass the car purchase off as an act of romance. He asked Uribe if, when intoxicated, he would propose to Nadine; Uribe said he didn’t recall.
“You said to her, ‘I want to be your slave’?” Cobum asked.
“Sitting here today, I don’t have a recollection of saying that to Nadine,” Uribe said.
Uribe is yet to be sentenced and could face as much as 95 years in prison on his guilty pleas.
Nadine is standing trial for the same bribery scheme that ended her husband’s political career and got him an 11-year prison sentence. Prosecutors say Nadine was the liaison between Robert and the several willing bidders eager to leverage his power in exchange for cash, cars and even bars of gold.
Uribe wasn’t the only one to take advantage. Nadine also fielded bribe payments in exchange for official acts on behalf of the Egyptian government, according to prosecutors.
“They were partners in crime, partners in corruption and partners in greed,” assistant U.S. attorney Lara Pomerantz told jurors during the prosecution’s opening argument last month.
Coburn told the jury that the prosecution’s characterization of Nadine was “grossly inaccurate.”
Nadine was initially set to face trial last year alongside her husband and their co-defendants, but health issues delayed her ability to sit for trial until now. Robert could testify as a defense witness about “his relationship with [Nadine] and her character and reputation for truthfulness,” according to court documents. Thus far, he hasn’t shown up in court for his wife’s trial.
The trial is expected to run until mid-May. Robert must report to federal prison in June.
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