U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his wife Nadine Arslanian arrive at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in New York City on September 27, 2023.
Timothy A. Clary | AFP | Getty Images
Nadine Menendez, the wife and co-defendant of Sen. Robert Menendez, has been diagnosed with breast cancer, the Democratic lawmaker announced Thursday during his trial on federal corruption charges.
“Due to the constant inquiries from the press and the persecution of my wife by reporters, she has asked me to disclose her medical condition,” Menendez, the senior senator from New Jersey, said in a statement his office shared with NBC News.
“Nadine suffers from third degree breast cancer, which required a mastectomy. “We are of course concerned about the severity and advanced stage of the disease,” Menendez said.
“She will need follow-up surgery and possibly radiation treatment. We hope and pray for the best results,” he said. “We ask the press and public to give her the time, space and privacy to deal with this difficult health condition as she undergoes surgery and recovery.”
Menendez shared the health information about his wife less than a day after his defense attorney blamed her in the senatorial trial in Manhattan federal court.
Both Menendez and his wife are accused in the case of a years-long scheme to pocket gold bars, stacks of cash and a variety of other bribes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in return for political favors.
In April, a judge separated Nadine Menendez’s trial from that of her husband and postponed it until at least July after her lawyers cited medical problems that had not been disclosed at the time. The trial of Menendez and two New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, began Monday.
Menendez was kept in the dark about his wife’s money problems and “blinded” from her financial woes, defense attorney Avi Weitzman told the 12-member jury in his opening statement Wednesday afternoon.
Nadine Menendez “had financial concerns that she kept from Bob,” he said.
The gold bars found during an FBI search of Menendez’s home – the “elephant in the room” – were found in “Nadine’s closet,” Weitzman said.
The attorney advised jurors to ask themselves every time they heard evidence about Nadine Menendez, “What did Bob know?”
He even showed a graphic showing a page from Where’s Waldo? Book – which was changed to read “Where’s Bob?” – to get to the point.
Menendez “did not take bribes,” Weitzman said, while emphasizing that his alleged corrupt behavior was actually just part of his job as a senator.
“Every action Senator Menendez took was to help his constituents,” he said.
Minutes earlier, U.S. Attorney Laura Pomerantz told jurors that Menendez had “put his power up for sale” and “used his wife as an intermediary.”
Menendez, 70, was “on guard” and “motivated by greed,” she said in her opening statement.
“This was not a normal policy,” Pomerantz said. “It was politics for profit.”
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2024-05-16 18:06:35
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