Prosecutors unveil cache of Menendez texts in bribery trial: “It is extremely important that we keep Nadine happy”

washington – Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was about to turn 64 when Nadine Arslanianwho would later become his wife and be indicted alongside him in a federal bribery caseasked to take him out to lunch for his birthday.

“I would love to be together, but as I said once, I don’t want to interfere with your boyfriend,” the Democratic senator responded on December 31, 2017.

A month later, on the day the Justice Department dismissed the remaining charges against him in a separate corruption case, she wrote him: “Now re-election!!!!”

The two planned to have dinner at a restaurant in New Jersey. After the meeting, she thanked him “for a great night”. He replied, “I enjoyed your company. We’ll have to do this again!”

Shortly afterwards, she asked him about his “international standing” – he told her he was the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – and set up meetings between the senator and Egyptian officials.

“I have a favor to ask of you, I hope you can do it,” she said in a voicemail about a possible meeting with an Egyptian official at the country’s embassy, ​​so that “we don’t need an explanation to Egypt about why which he is rallying for.” an employee who is not at the embassy.”

She said the meeting “would be good for the relationship between Egypt and the United States, among other things.”

The messages were part of dozens of communications that prosecutors showed jurors this week through the testimony of an FBI agent, exposing the beginning of the relationship that they said coincided with a years-long bribery scheme.

The couple is accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including gold bars, cash, a Mercedes convertible and mortgage payments. In return, the senator allegedly used his political influence to enrich and protect three New Jersey businessmen. He is also accused of acting as a foreign agent for Egypt.

Menendez is on trial with two New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes. All three pleaded not guilty. Nadine Menendez, whose trial was postponed because she undergoes treatment for breast canceralso pleaded not guilty.

Menendez’s lawyers said he did not have a key to the locked cabinet where investigators discovered envelopes with money and gold bars, and instead it was Nadine Menendez who gained access. The senator was unaware that his girlfriend-turned-wife was facing financial challenges and that they were living separate lives, according to their lawyers.

But the two often referred to each other as “mon amour,” which means “my love” in French, and shared their locations through the “Find My Friends” iPhone app, according to their cache of text messages.

Months after the senator’s girlfriend left the first voicemail asking for a favor, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer who worked for Menendez asked a colleague how many Americans were assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

“Don’t ask why I’m asking…” said the employee.

“I would have to ask and then someone will ask why,” replied the colleague.

“Menendez is asking,” the employee said.

The senator sent a message to his girlfriend a day later informing her of the number of Americans and Egyptians who worked at the embassy. She relayed this information to Hana, who sent it to an Egyptian government official. Prosecutors argued that the information was confidential, although unclassified, and put embassy employees at risk. Menendez’s lawyers protested the confidentiality of the information, saying it was contained in public government audits.

Text messages and call records showed Nadine Menendez as an intermediary between the senator, New Jersey businessmen and Egyptian officials. When someone received a request from the senator, they went through her and the messages were quickly passed on to each party.

The requests included drafting a letter on behalf of the Egyptian government requesting the release of $300 million in aid and including specific mention of Egypt and the International Monetary Fund in a speech.

“In your speech you could say: Egypt is now in the right direction with the new government now. With the International Monetary Fund. And all the new developments, the new capital and the new Suez Canal,” Nadine Menendez wrote to Senator in October 2018. “Egypt is important to the United States.”

“Really???” he responded two minutes later.

She told him that Hana said it was “important” to talk about the IMF.

The following year, Egypt would grant Hana’s halal certification startup a lucrative monopoly, a decision that was protested by the US government. According to prosecutors, the monopoly gave Hana the resources to pay the bribes she had promised the couple.

The text messages also show Nadine Menendez repeatedly venting to the senator and others about Hana when he was unable to pay her and how she was at risk of losing her home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, after falling behind on her mortgage payments.

“It was a year of Will’s broken promises to me and I gave 1000% of myself, my time and kept every promise to Will,” she wrote to a lawyer at Hana’s company, referring to the businessman by his nickname. “I honestly felt used over and over again.”

The lawyer reached out to another man, telling him that “it is very important to make sure that Nadine remains happy, because if she is not, she will cancel the meetings that Wael has scheduled with Senator Menendez for Monday and Tuesday and we should not let that happen.”

In text messages to the senator, she called Hana “a lying idiot.”

Hana ended up providing more than $23,000 to save her home from foreclosure in 2019, but their relationship, which Hana’s lawyers described as a brother-sister bond, continued to have ups and downs over the years.

“I’m not going to be angry or upset anymore, but one day I would really love to know that one of the pyramids collapsed and he was trapped forever,” Nadine Menendez texted her husband in September 2021.