The destiny of Sen. Bob Menendez’s spouse Nadine was left in limbo Tuesday after a decide indefinitely delayed her federal corruption trial — hours earlier than a jury convicted her embattled husband of a sprawling plot to pocket gold bars and different bribes.
In a quick ruling Tuesday morning, Decide Sidney Stein dominated that “the ends of justice” have been greatest served by adjourning the trial of Nadine Menendez, 57, which had been set to unfold later this yr.
The decide didn’t cite a purpose for his resolution, however issued the ruling after Nadine’s lawyer wrote in a June court docket submitting that she is “in intense, continual ache” after having had surgical procedure wherein “medical gear [was] implanted in her physique” as a part of her breast most cancers therapy.
The New Jersey senator, 70, stated in Could that his spouse was affected by “Grade 3 breast most cancers” and would require a mastectomy.
Nadine Menendez served as a key cog within the scheme to scoop up gold, money and a brand new luxurious automobile in trade for catering to crooked Backyard State businessmen and Egyptian and Qatari officers, Manhattan federal prosecutors stated.
The senator’s legal professionals, Avi Weitzman and Adam Payment, wrote in a joint assertion Tuesday that Menendez’s “highest precedence is his spouse’s well being, and we’re happy that she is being given the time she must concentrate on therapy and restoration.”
Through the trial, the attorneys used an eyebrow-raising “blame my spouse” protection, suggesting to jurors that Nadine had stored her highly effective husband at midnight about asking his co-defendants for the alleged bribes.
The jury’s conviction of Menendez on all 16 felony counts that he’d confronted means that they didn’t purchase these legal professionals’ rationalization for the gold bars and different goodies FBI brokers recovered from the bed room Nadine and Bob shared.
Nadine’s legal professional, Barry Coburn, declined to remark Tuesday.
Nadine, who began courting the senator in 2018 and married him in 2020, didn’t attend her convicted husband’s trial.
She was at his aspect in earlier court docket appearances — together with at one listening to the place she toted a Chanel purse to the protection desk.
