A New York jury convicted Senator Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) on 16 felony charges on Tuesday, including obstruction of justice, acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion and honest services wire fraud.
Over the course of a two-month trial, prosecutors accused the three-term senator and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, of accepting bribes — including hundreds of thousands of dollars, gold bars, and a Mercedes-Benz convertible — from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for help with a number of legal issues. Menendez was also accused of accepting bribes to work as a foreign agent on behalf of Qatar and Egypt while he served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Menendez, Arslanian-Menendez, and the three businessmen, Wael Hana, Fred Daibes and Jose Uribe, were all indicted in September 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Uribe, a trucking and insurance executive, pleaded guilty on seven counts, including conspiracy to commit bribery and wire fraud. He testified against Menendez last month that he did in fact bribe the senator with a Mercedes-Benz convertible.
Arslanian-Menendez, meanwhile, has pleaded not guilty and is set to be tried next month, after her attorneys lobbied to have her trial separated from her husbands because her diagnosis of Stage 3 breast cancer would have made it difficult to stand trial alongside the senator.
Menendez’s attorneys argued that it was his wife who was behind the bribery scheme, unbeknownst to the senator. They argued Arslanian-Menendez had friendly relationships with the businessmen and lied to them about things her husband said or did to reap financial rewards.
“She’s obviously using Bob’s name all the time,” Menendez attorney Adam Fee said during his closing argument.
“For decades, Nadine has had to find a way to get by — long before she met Bob,” Fee said.
He claimed she was still seeing an ex-boyfriend when she began dating Menendez in early 2018; Menendez later broke up with her that fall, he said, arguing that the prosecution’s allegations that the pair were co-conspirators in an influence-peddling scheme are “totally disconnected from reality.”
Fee claimed Menendez’s actions were “lawful, normal and good for his constituents and this country.”
The trial, which lasted two weeks longer than expected, featured testimony from some 37 witnesses. Menendez did not testify on his own behalf.
Assistant U.S. attorney Paul Monteleoni argued evidence overwhelmingly proved Menendez was an active part of the bribery scheme; the senator allegedly made phone calls, wrote letters and met with both Egyptian intelligence officials and the New Jersey businessmen himself.
It was Menendez who was calling the shots and using his wife as an intermediary, Monteleoni claimed. In their Englewood Cliffs, N.J., home, the senator would even use a bell to summon her.
“He wasn’t the one being led around and manipulated by Nadine. He’s not a puppet having his strings pulled by someone that he summons with a bell,” Monteleoni argued.
Menendez previously faced separate federal corruption charges in 2015, though those charges were dropped when a jury failed to reach a verdict.
An attorney for Hana argued that Hana and Arslanian-Menendez had been friends for years before she met the senator and that the alleged bribes were merely part of a series of gifts he and Arslanian-Mendendez exchanged over the years.
And an attorney for Daibes said Daibes and Menendez had been friends for more than three decades.
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