NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez asked a federal judge Thursday to delay his late January sentencing for bribery and acting as an agent of the Egyptian government. He said his family would suffer a “huge emotional toll.” ‘ if the New Jersey Democrat were convicted at his wife’s trial.
His attorneys told Judge Sidney H. Stein in a letter that Nadine Menendez would appear before a jury that would find it impossible not to hear about her husband’s sentencing if it took place on the scheduled date, eight days after her trial.
“Simply put, the current timeline poses an unnecessary and overwhelming risk of poisoning the proceedings against Nadine,” the attorneys wrote.
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They recommended that sentencing be moved to a date immediately after his wife’s trial, which may not end until March.
Menendez, 70, resigned in the weeks after his conviction in July on 16 charges, including bribery, extortion, honest services fraud and obstruction of justice. He challenged the conviction after prosecutors recently revealed that jurors were allowed to see evidence during deliberations that should have been excluded from the trial.
His wife, whose trial was postponed after it was revealed she would need surgery to treat breast cancer, is facing much of the same evidence as her husband in Manhattan federal court. Her trial will begin on January 21, while her husband will be sentenced on January 29.
Bob Menendez’s attorneys wrote that the former senator “often cares for his wife’s physical and emotional needs.”
“Convicting him at the trial of his wife will obviously take a tremendous emotional toll on both Senator Menendez and his family,” they said. “To ask him to face a conviction during the criminal trial of his wife, who is also in the midst of an ongoing battle with a life-threatening illness, is too much to ask of any man.”
In a separate letter to the judge, an attorney for Nadine Menendez urged the judge to reject a suggestion from prosecutors that sentencing would take place immediately before trial.
“If Mr. Menendez were convicted shortly before our client was scheduled to appear in court, it would likely have a devastating impact on our client, which in my opinion would make it difficult, if not impossible, for her to focus on and meaningfully participate in her trial,” attorney Barry Coburn wrote.
A spokesperson for prosecutors declined to comment.
Prosecutors say nearly $150,000 in gold bars, along with $480,000 in cash and a Mercedes-Benz convertible found during a 2022 FBI raid on the Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, home Nadine Menendez shared with her husband, was given to the couple in a period of four years. years, so that the senator would do favors for three New Jersey businessmen.
Two of the three businessmen were convicted along with Menendez, while a third businessman pleaded guilty and testified at his trial.
When he was indicted in the fall of 2023, Menendez held a powerful position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a position he was forced to relinquish.
