Nadine Menendez, Wife of a Senator, Will Be Sentenced in Bribery Scheme

For a time, Nadine Menendez was a powerful senator’s plus one.

She dined with intelligence officials and the wives of ambassadors, shuttling frequently between New Jersey and Washington, where her husband, Robert Menendez, was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

That life is gone.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Manhattan is expected to sentence Ms. Menendez, 58, for her role in a complex scheme to trade her husband’s political clout for cash, gold and a Mercedes-Benz. The sentencing comes several months after Mr. Menendez, a Democrat who represented New Jersey in Congress for three decades, began serving an 11-year prison term.

Prosecutors have recommended that Ms. Menendez be sentenced to at least seven years for her role as a conduit for messages and bribes to her husband, and for arranging meetings with Egyptian officials.

Her lawyers have argued that a sentence of one year and one day is appropriate, citing her history of enduring abusive relationships and a childhood in wartime Lebanon.

The government and Ms. Menendez’s family and friends have presented starkly different versions of her capacity to have played a central role in such a sprawling international conspiracy.

The couple were tried separately after Ms. Menendez was diagnosed with breast cancer, and testimony in both trials took jurors from Cairo to Havana to Beirut, laying bare a global halal meat monopoly propped up with the senator’s support and used as a source of bribes. Both were convicted of each of the charges they faced.

According to prosecutors, Ms. Menendez was a linchpin of the bribery conspiracy. Her children, sister and friends said her lack of confidence had made her easy prey for manipulative men.

A “convenient scapegoat,” her lawyers wrote in a memo to the judge, Sidney H. Stein of Federal District Court. “She is a kindhearted and compassionate person whose identity is defined by her romantic partner,” they wrote.

Prosecutors, however, cited examples that they said showed she did not commit bribery “reluctantly, fleetingly or on a small scale.”

“She did so eagerly, for years, and in a scheme implicating foreign relations, national security and the integrity of state and federal law enforcement,” prosecutors in the office of Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote.

The former senator and Ms. Menendez were married five years ago, after a romance that began in early 2018 — soon after Mr. Menendez had walked away from unrelated federal bribery charges in New Jersey. A jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict, and prosecutors dropped the case after a judge dismissed the most serious charges.

In a letter to Judge Stein, in Manhattan, written from prison, Mr. Menendez, 71, said his wife had suffered a lifetime of trauma and was “often taken advantage of.”

“Even with the best intensions, sometimes you just have to say no,” he wrote. “She found that hard to do.”

A September 2023 indictment accused Mr. and Ms. Menendez of taking bribes from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for the senator’s efforts to steer U.S. aid and weapons to Egypt and to quash criminal investigations that threatened his allies.

Mr. Menendez was found guilty in July 2024, after a nine-week trial in Manhattan, becoming the only U.S. senator ever to be convicted of acting as an agent of a foreign government. He is appealing the conviction.

Ms. Menendez’s trial was postponed so that she could be treated for breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy and completed reconstructive surgery this spring, just weeks before her trial began in Manhattan federal court.

She was convicted in April of bribery, obstruction of justice and conspiring to make Mr. Menendez an agent of Egypt.

If Ms. Menendez is sentenced to prison time by Judge Stein, she is not expected to report immediately; prosecutors have said they would not oppose postponing her prison term until after she completes cancer treatment.

Two of the businessmen charged with the couple stood trial with Mr. Menendez last year, and were also convicted.

Wael Hana, a U.S. citizen born in Egypt who founded the halal meat certification company that prosecutors said was used to funnel bribes to the couple, is serving an eight-year prison term. Fred Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer, is serving a seven-year sentence.

The third businessman, Jose Uribe, a failed insurance broker who gave the couple the Mercedes-Benz, pleaded guilty and became a star government witness, testifying against the senator and Ms. Menendez at each of their trials. He is to be sentenced on Oct. 9.