Sen. Bob Menendez Throws His Wife, Nadine, Under The Bus At Bribery Trial, Claiming Scheme Was All Her Doing

Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-New Jersey) defense lawyer claimed that his wife, Nadine Menendez, carried out a bribery scheme behind his back during opening statements at his federal trial. 

Menendez’s lawyer, Avi Weitzman, told jurors in a Manhattan federal court on May 15 that Nadine “sidelined” his client, who prosecutors claim took gold bars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and a Mercedes convertible in exchange for wielding his influence to assist three businessmen and the governments of Qatar and Egypt.

“[Menendez] didn’t know about Nadine’s dealings,” Weitzman stated. “You can’t just assume that Bob knows about them. He did not violate the law, and the allegations by the United States Attorney’s Office are wrong, dead wrong. He did not ask for bribes. He did not get any bribes.”

The attorney also claimed that “the government has been investigating this case for years” and had not found evidence that Menendez accepted a bribe.

“Where were the gold bars found,” Weitzman stated during opening statements, “[The] gold bars were found in a locked closet. It is Nadine’s closet.”

While he stated this, he pulled up a photo of the closet, which he said was “filled with [Nadine’s] clothes.”

“The senator did not know the gold bars were there,” the lawyer told jurors. “[Nadine] kept Bob sidelined. Nadine had these relationships long before she met Bob.”

The prosecution had a different take on the evidence. 

“This case is about a public official who put greed first and put his power up for sale,” Manhattan Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz said during her opening remarks.

“This is Robert Menendez, a United States senator from New Jersey, and he was entrusted to make big decisions, including decisions that affect this country’s national security,” she noted. “Robert Menendez was a United States senator on the take, motivated by greed, focused on how much money he could put in his own and his wife’s pockets. That is why you’re here today. That is what this trial is all about.”

“This was not politics as usual,” the Manhattan assistant U.S. attorney claimed. “This was politics for profit.”

“The FBI found gold bars and over $400,000 in cash in Menendez’s home, in a safe, in jacket pockets, in shoes, all over the house,” she pointed out. “He was powerful. He was also corrupt. And what was his price? Gold bars. The scheme filled his pockets, it filled his wife’s pockets, and it fed their greed,” the assistant U.S. attorney stated.

“Menendez abused his positions to feed his own greed and to keep his wife happy,” she argued.

Pomerantz also pointed out that Menendez was cautious about never discussing the alleged bribery scheme in writing with Nadine and intentionally used her as an intermediary. 

“He was careful not to send too many texts,” the assistant U.S. attorney told the jury. “He used Nadine as his go-between to deliver messages to and from the people paying bribes.”

But Weitzman said that the prosecutors’ accusations were “dead wrong” and stated that Menendez had just been doing “his job” by reaching out to constituents and practicing “diplomacy.”

During the trial, Weitzman showed a slide with a Where’s Waldo cartoon with the title changed to “Where’s Bob,” which caused the jurors and prosecutors to laugh.

“In this case, we need to figure out ‘where’s Bob,'” he noted. “I’ll tell you where — he was doing his job in D.C.” 

The attorney said Nadine is a “beautiful, tall, international woman” of Lebanese descent whose family had collected gold, which they left to her. He argued that much of the gold found by the feds was left to Nadine by her family.

He told the jurors that it is “cultural” and that “they like to give gold and other precious metals as gifts,” such as christenings and baby namings. “The evidence will show that Nadine’s family had a lot of gold,” Menendez’s lawyer argued. 

Weitzman did not explain why the gold bars in the closet had serial numbers that could be traced back to Fred Daibes, a co-defendant accused of bribing the couple.

The lawyer described to the people in the courtroom a married pair who lead separate lives with separate bank accounts and phone plans.

Weitzman claimed that Nadine hid her financial problems from Menendez and “kept him in the dark about what she was asking others to give her.”

Nadine was not in court, and her lawyer, David Schertler, refused to comment.

Court filings revealed that Menendez’s legal team had filed a secret document back in January. This document was disclosed publicly on April 16 and showed that he might present a defense strategy that blamed Nadine for his alleged bribery charges.

His legal team would have done this “by demonstrating the ways in which she withheld information from Senator Menendez or otherwise led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place.”

In early May, Menendez claimed that the gold bars and cash found in his home during an FBI raid had been a result of “generational trauma.”

His attorneys asserted in a letter disclosed on May 1 that he stashed gold bars and cash as a result of “two significant traumatic events” in his life.