Jury choice started Tuesday within the bribery trial of Nadine Menendez, whose husband, former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, was sentenced to 11 years in jail earlier this yr for accepting a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} price of gold and money.
Nadine Menendez, 58, was initially scheduled to face trial final yr with the 71-year-old Democrat, however a breast most cancers prognosis led to surgical procedure that compelled her trial to be delayed. She has pleaded not responsible to fees that she participated in the identical bribery scheme that led to her husband’s conviction.
Bob Menendez was convicted of taking bribes from three New Jersey businessmen in return for a wide range of favors, together with utilizing his affect to assist a few of them of their dealings with overseas governments. The senator was convicted of performing as a overseas agent for the Egyptian authorities. He’s scheduled to report back to jail on June 6.
The submitting of fees in opposition to Bob Menendez in fall 2023 compelled him to give up his highly effective put up as chairman of the Senate International Relations Committee. He resigned as a senator after his conviction.
All through the senator’s two-month trial, Nadine Menendez was talked about repeatedly for her dealings with the businessmen. Considered one of them testified that he purchased Nadine Menendez a luxurious automobile after the senator tried to get New Jersey prosecutors to drop a prison investigation involving one in all his associates.
In 2022, FBI brokers raided the Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, dwelling the place the couple lived, discovering over $100,000 in gold bars and greater than $480,000 in money stuffed in envelopes in shoe packing containers, jackets and boots.
The then-senator maintained throughout his trial that the gold bars belonged to his spouse and that the money resulted from his behavior of hoarding cash as a result of his mother and father escaped Cuba in 1951 with solely the money that they had hidden in a grandfather clock.
