Wife of former Sen. Bob Menendez fights for reduced 1-year sentence

Lawyers for the wife of former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez say she should be sentenced to a year and a day in prison rather than the eight years recommended by the federal court’s probation office for her conviction on bribery charges.

Nadine Menendez, 58, is scheduled to be sentenced next month for her April conviction on charges that she teamed up with the New Jersey Democrat to accept bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car from three New Jersey businessmen.

The lawyers in a submission to the sentencing judge on Friday cited additional surgery she must endure related to her breast cancer treatment to explain that lengthy time behind bars could be a death sentence.

They said the amount of money involved in her crimes was about $400,000, less than half of what the government claims was the amount lost as a result of a bribery scheme that prosecutors say stretched from 2018 until a year after the FBI raided the Menendez home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, in 2022.

“Nadine is not her husband, or her co-defendants,” her lawyers wrote. “Despite all of the Government’s efforts to present her as a vixen, the reality is far from that. Her entire life has been marked by men who have taken advantage of her, and harmed her, in myriad ways. An extended sentence is not warranted, needed, or appropriate under these circumstances.”

Prosecutors will file their sentencing recommendation at a later date. Bob Menendez is serving an 11-year sentence.

Prosecutors accused Nadine Menendez of facilitating bribes to the senator around the time that they began dating, before they married in the fall of 2020.