NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez asked a federal judge on Thursday to delay his end-of-January sentencing on bribery charges and acting as an agent of the Egyptian government, saying his family would suffer a "tremendous emotional toll" if the New Jersey Democrat were sentenced during his wife's trial.
His lawyers told Judge Sidney H. Stein in a letter that Nadine Menendez would face a jury that might find it impossible not to hear about her husband’s sentencing if it occurred on its scheduled date, eight days into her trial.
“Put simply, the current timeline poses an unnecessary and overwhelming risk of poisoning the proceedings against Nadine,” the lawyers wrote.
They recommended moving the sentencing to a date immediately after his wife's trial, which might not conclude until March.
The 70-year-old Menendez resigned in the weeks after his July conviction on 16 charges, including bribery, extortion, honest services fraud and obstruction of justice. He has challenged the conviction after prosecutors recently revealed that jurors were permitted to see some evidence during deliberations that was supposed to be excluded from the trial.
His wife, whose trial was postponed after it was learned she would need surgery for treatment of breast cancer, faces much of the same evidence as her husband in Manhattan federal court. Her trial is set to begin Jan. 21 while her husband is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 29.
Bob Menendez's lawyers wrote that the former senator “often tends to his wife's physical and emotional needs.”
“Sentencing him during his wife’s trial will of course take a tremendous emotional toll on both Senator Menendez and his family,” they said. “To ask him to face sentencing during the criminal trial of his wife, who is also in the midst of an ongoing battle against a life-threatening disease, is too much to ask of any man.”
In a separate letter to the judge, a lawyer for Nadine Menendez urged the judge to reject a suggestion by prosecutors that the sentencing occur immediately before the trial.
“If Mr. Menendez were sentenced shortly before our client proceeds to trial, that likely would have a devastating impact on our client, which, I believe, would make it difficult if not impossible for her to concentrate on, and participate meaningfully 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 at the Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, home that Nadine Menendez shared with her husband were given to the couple over a four-year span 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 to charges and testified at his trial.
At the time he was charged in fall 2023, Menendez held a powerful position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a post he was forced to give up.