Liam Conner
washington – Prosecutors say Nadine Menendez, wife of New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, was instrumental in orchestrating the alleged scheme that culminated in bribery charges against her and the senator, whose political career and freedom are at stake as Your trial has begun this week.
Originally scheduled to stand trial with her husband, Nadine Menendez’s trial is now scheduled to take place later this summer because of a “serious medical condition“which requires surgery and weeks of recovery.
The senator’s lawyers indicated in court filings that he could defend himself in part by claiming that his wife “withheld information” from him about his dealings with three New Jersey businessmen and “led him to believe that nothing illegal was happening.”
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In four counts, prosecutors alleged that the senator and his wife accepted bribes from businessmen and then took actions that benefited the governments of Egypt and Qatar and interfered in criminal investigations. The longtime lawmaker faces 16 criminal charges, while his wife faces 15. Both have pleaded not guilty.
But one of the accused businessmen, José Uribe, pleaded guilty and is cooperating with investigators. The other two – Wael Hana and Fred Daibes – are being tried by the senator and have also declared themselves innocent.
The senator began dating Nadine Arslanian, a tall, Lebanese-born blonde 13 years his junior, in 2018. The two met at an IHOP in Union City, New Jersey, though there are different timeframes for that first meeting — and some means of Communication reports say the two knew each other for years before they started dating.
Shortly after their relationship began, according to prosecutors, she and her friend Hana introduced the senator to Egyptian intelligence and military authorities, arranging dinners at expensive restaurants and meetings in his Senate office.
“What else can the love of my life do for you?” she supposedly asked at one of those dinners at a Washington steakhouse.
“Whenever you need anything, you have my number and we will make it happen,” she wrote to an Egyptian official seeking the senator’s help on a foreign policy issue important to the African country, according to prosecutors.
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Nadine Menendez and Hana were intermediaries between the senator and Egyptian authorities, relaying confidential, non-public information to the Egyptians about the number of people stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and their nationalities, as well as non-public details about military aid to the country. said the accusations. When an Egyptian official asked for help drafting a letter to pressure the senator’s colleagues to support U.S. aid to Egypt, Nadine Menendez allegedly asked the senator to write it because the official and Hana had obtained her “authorization for a project.”
It was the start of a scheme that would pave the way for lucrative deals between the businessmen and the governments of Qatar and Egypt, and included interference in criminal investigations involving the businessmen and their allies, according to the charges. In return, the Menedezes reportedly received piles of cash, more than a dozen gold bars and a new luxury car.
Nadine Menendez needed a car because she wrecked hers in December 2018 when ran over and killed a pedestrian. She was not charged with the death.
Prosecutors say she texted Hana about her missing car on several occasions after the accident. He connected her with Uribe, his business partner who was implicated in an insurance fraud case. In January 2019, the Menendezes and the two businessmen reportedly agreed that the senator would intervene in the insurance fraud case.
Uribe then bought Nadine Menendez a black Mercedes-Benz convertible, meeting her in a restaurant parking lot to hand over more than $15,000 in cash that she used for the down payment and later arranging to pay for the car. , according to the charges. In a February court filing, prosecutors said Hana also purchased an engagement ring for Nadine Menendez as part of the deal.
“It could be a fantastic 2019 in all respects,” she wrote to the senator a few weeks later, after it seemed likely that Egypt would grant a monopoly to a Hana-owned company, in a deal that provided a “revenue stream” for he. pay the Menendezes, prosecutors alleged.
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With the help of the senator, Nadine Menéndez created a shell company in the summer of 2019, which was used to receive payments for “little or no attendance work,” according to prosecutors. At the time, prosecutors say she was tens of thousands of dollars behind on her mortgage and facing foreclosure. Hana’s company, they say, paid $23,000 to catch up on its mortgage payments as the senator tried to pressure New Jersey authorities to end the fraud investigation linked to Uribe.
Details about his career are unclear. The charges described the divorced mother of two as unemployed when she met the senator, and friends told the New York Times that she did not work outside the home while raising her children. She attended New York University, majoring in international politics and French culture and civilization.
On a podcast interview In 2020, she said she was born in Beirut to Armenian parents, and that her family fled to Greece and England during the Lebanese civil war. They eventually settled in the United States, living in California before moving to New York.
Nadine Menéndez I sat on a bench in front of the Taj Mahal in October 2019, as the senator stood behind her, with his hands on her shoulders, singing “Never Enough” from the movie “The Greatest Showman.”
“Towers of gold are still too small, these hands could hold the world, and it will never be enough, it will never be enough for me,” he sang.
He pulled a ring from his pocket to propose marriage and the two kissed and hugged.
The senator told the New York Times after their engagement, his bride was “beautiful and smart and had such a big personality. There was just that aura about her.”
They got married a year later, in a ceremony held outdoors due to the pandemic, the senator said shared on your Facebook page.
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According to the accusations, the couple continued to benefit from their relationship with Hana.
In June 2021, Hana purchased 22 30-gram gold bars, each with a unique serial number, the indictment said, adding that two of those gold bars were found in the couple’s home during a search in June 2022. The Prosecutors said Nadine Menendez sold two one-kilogram gold bars, which she said came from her mother, to a jeweler in New York months before the search.
After the FBI searched her Englewood home, Nadine Menendez and Uribe met to discuss what they would tell investigators about the car payments, the charges said. They agreed to characterize the bribe payments as loans, so the senator wrote checks to his wife, who then wrote checks to Hana and Uribe, according to the charges.
Prosecutors said the couple “had their attorney make statements about the bribe money” that they “knew to be false in an effort to interfere with the investigation.”
Last week, Nadine Menéndez asked a federal judge for more time to hire new lawyers, saying her health problems prevented her from meeting the deadline to inform the court about her new lawyer.
