Bob Menendez’s wife says she was ex-senator’s ‘puppet’ as she gets 4½ years in prison for bribery

NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez’s sobbing wife told a judge that her husband was “not the man I thought he was” before she was sentenced Thursday to 4½ years in prison for selling the powerful New Jersey politician’s influence in exchange for bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car.

U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein sentenced Nadine Menendez, 58, for her April conviction for colluding from 2018 to 2023 with her husband, the former Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a variety of corrupt schemes, some involving assisting the Egyptian government.

Nadine Menendez, tearfully addressing the judge for several minutes before he sentenced her, described her husband as a manipulative liar.

“I put my life in his hands and he strung me like a puppet,” she said. “The blindfold is off. I now know he’s not my savior. He’s not the man I thought he was.”

Standing outside the courthouse afterward, she said she doesn’t plan to divorce her 71-year-old husband, who is serving an 11-year sentence for taking bribes, extortion, and acting as an agent of the Egyptian government.

Stein told the defendant that she wasn’t the person she was portrayed as during last year’s trial of her husband and two New Jersey businessmen, when the judge said she was painted as “the true force behind the conspiracies.”

But he said she also wasn’t the “innocent observer of what was happening around you,” as her lawyer claimed.

“You knew what you were doing. Your role was purposeful,” he said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz said Nadine Mendendez was “the second-most culpable member” of the scheme, after her husband, and that she “did so without hesitation.”

“The defendant was not a bit player” the prosecutor said. “She played a critical role in selling the power of a U.S. senator.”

When she spoke, Nadine Menendez partly blamed her husband, saying she was duped by his power and stature and that she felt compelled to do whatever he wanted, such as calling or meeting with certain people.

“I would never have imagined someone of his ranking putting me in this position,” she said, though she acknowledged that in retrospect, she was a grown woman and should have known better.