NEW YORK (AP) — Sen. Bob Menendez’s wife was barred from appearing in court next week after her attorney said she is experiencing intense and chronic pain following surgery to treat cancer.
Nadine Menendez was scheduled to go on trial before the Democrat last month, but her trial was postponed until at least July after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She was scheduled to attend a hearing next Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, where her attorney, Barry Coburn, asked to waive her appearance following recent “invasive cancer surgery.”
Coburn wrote that she has “medical devices implanted in her body and is in intense, chronic pain.”
Judge Sidney H. Stein said in an order late in the day that she can skip the hearing.
Menendez, 70, and his wife, 57, have pleaded not guilty to helping three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for bribes in the form of gold bars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and a car.
Much of the evidence shown to jurors since the trial began four weeks ago focused on Nadine Menendez’s communications with the businessmen and the senator through hundreds of emails, text messages and phone calls.
Prosecutors showed Wednesday that her communications with different individuals were often seconds or minutes apart as she had conversations with the businessmen and Menendez, such as when money was provided by one of the businessmen in 2019 to finance a Mercedes-Benz.
Two of the businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, are on trial before the senator, while a third businessman has pleaded guilty and will testify later in the trial.
The Menendez couple started dating in early 2018 and married in 2020, when the senator moved into his wife’s home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
On Monday, Menendez filed for re-election as an independent. If he prevails, it would be his fourth term as senator.
He has emphasized that everything he did on behalf of businessmen was part of the work that every elected official does on behalf of his constituents.
However, prosecutors told the jury that Menendez tried to sell his office to enrich himself, giving Hana a lucrative monopoly on certifying meat exports to Egypt as meeting Islamic guidelines and helping Daibes with investments related to a member of the royal family of Qatar. .
