All eyes should have been on the bribery trial of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), but a fortuitous scheduling clash with a significantly higher-profile trial has allowed him to largely escape the daily onslaught of media scrutiny.
Former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial is taking place just a few blocks away in Manhattan, New York, allowing Menendez a little breathing room.
But make no mistake — federal prosecutors say the events unfolding in Menendez’s trial could have a far greater impact on America and expose what happens when power and influence go unchecked.
The government alleges that Menendez and his wife, Nadine, accepted bribes from New Jersey businessmen Wael Hana and Fred Daibes. In exchange, Menendez greased the wheels in deals that benefited Hana and the governments of Egypt and Qatar and used his considerable clout to get unrelated criminal charges against Daibes dropped.
Hana and Daibes are on trial with the senator, have separate lawyers, and have pleaded not guilty.
They claim they did nothing wrong and that the gifts, which included gold bars, furniture, and a Mercedes Benz convertible, were all ethically above board.
The longtime lawmaker, who was forced to step down from his role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after he was arrested and charged, faces 16 felony counts. His wife faces 15.
If convicted, the couple, who have pleaded not guilty, could see prison time.
The trial is expected to last several weeks and will examine what prosecutors say were elaborate and illegal moves made by the Menendezs to peddle power.
In Menendez’s opening statement on Wednesday, his lawyer Avi Weitzman pinned most of the blame on Nadine Menendez, whom he painted as a greedy grifter who kept her alleged illegal activities as well as her financial situation away from her husband.
“Every time the government shows you something about Nadine, just ask yourself, ‘Where’s Bob?’” Weitzman said, displaying the question over a cartoon crowd borrowed from a Where’s Waldo? book for the jury.
Nadine Menendez has been married to the senator for about four years. She was supposed to go on trial with her husband but her court date has been pushed to July. It was revealed this week that she has breast cancer and will require a mastectomy and possible rounds of radiation.
The case against Bob Menendez, Hana, and Daibes is a complicated one that is expected to have many twists and turns over the next few weeks.
The Washington Examiner has broken down four of the key players and their link to the Menendez family into digestible bites.
Sen. Bob Menendez
The three-term Democratic senator was among New Jersey’s most powerful political figures.
He was dangerous to his enemies and generous with his friends, which is what may have gotten him into his latest, potentially career-ending, debacle.
Bob Menendez is the child of working-class Cuban immigrant parents. He showed an early interest in politics and was mentored by then-Union City Mayor William Musto.
In 1974, Bob Menendez won a local school board seat at 20. Eight years later, he unsuccessfully challenged his mentor to become mayor.
Bob Menendez was first elected to Congress in 1992. He was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 2006 by Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine to fill the remaining year in Corzine’s Senate term after Corzine was elected governor.
Corruption claims have dogged Bob Menendez throughout his congressional career. During his first campaign for a full term in 2006, then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie subpoenaed records related to Bob Menendez and the North Hudson Community Action Corp., a nonprofit group that paid the senator $300,000 over nine years to rent office space in a house Bob Menendez owned. As a U.S. representative, Bob Menendez helped North Husdon secure federal funds. The investigation was ultimately closed.
In 2015, Bob Menendez made headlines again for being the first sitting senator in 35 years to face a federal bribery trial over similar charges.
He was accused of doing favors for Dr. Salomon Melgen, a wealthy eye doctor from Florida, in exchange for rides on private plans, gifts, and political donations.
He was charged with 12 counts of corruption, including six counts of bribery and three counts of honest services fraud. Melgen was tried alongside Bob Menendez. A mistrial was declared after jurors could not reach a verdict. In 2018, prosecutors announced they intended to retry Bob Menendez, but less than a week later, a judge acquitted Bob Menendez and Melgen of seven of the 18 charges they faced. The Justice Department dismissed the rest a few days later. After being cleared, Bob Menendez claimed, “To those who were digging my political grave so they could jump into my seat, I know who you are, and I won’t forget you.”
In the latest trial, Bob Menendez has claimed he did nothing wrong and that the gifts and cash he received from Hana and Daibes weren’t part of a quid pro quo. His legal strategy has also been to shift much of the blame on his wife, saying her consulting company kept him in the dark about any potential misdeeds. It is unclear if he will take the stand in his own defense. He has not ruled out running as an independent for his Senate seat in November if he is acquitted.
Nadine Menendez
Bob and Nadine Menendez (formerly Nadine Arslanian) met in 2018.
He proposed to her that October in India, singing “Never Enough” from The Greatest Showman outside the Taj Mahal. She accepted. The couple got married two years later on Oct. 3, 2020, in an intimate, socially distanced ceremony, followed by an outdoor reception.
Nadine Menendez has a master’s degree in French language and civilization from New York University and has two children. She struggled financially after a 2005 divorce and faced financial foreclosure, according to the New York Times. She bounced back after she met Bob Menendez and formed an international consulting company, with assets, including gold bars valued at $250,000.
She introduced her influential husband to Hana, a New Jersey-based Egyptian American businessman who had a string of failed business deals.
Prosecutors alleged that Hana began using Nadine Menendez’s new relationship for his own benefit, cultivating close ties with Bob Menendez.
They also claimed Nadine Menendez passed information to the senator from Egyptian officials and that she knew at least some of them were intelligence officers.
She has denied all of the charges against her.
Wael Hana
Hana, now an American citizen, emigrated from Egypt.
He had a laundry list of bad business deals that included a truck stop, an Italian restaurant, and a limo service but hit the jackpot when his friend, Nadine Arslanian, started dating Bob Menendez.
Soon thereafter, Hana’s fortunes started to turn around.
He was introduced to a growing circle of top Egyptian officials by Bob Menendez, who was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time.
Hana, a Coptic Christian, won sole control over certifying all halal food being imported into Egypt.
Egyptian officials in 2019 gave one of his companies an exclusive permit to import and export meat prepared according to the tight dietary restrictions in Islam.
Hana made a ton of money in the process.
Federal prosecutors allege that some of that money was used to bribe Bob Menendez when U.S. agricultural officials raised concerns about the meat monopoly. Bob Menendez stepped in on Hana’s behalf, and the contracts remained intact.
Hana has hyped himself up as achieving the American dream, going from being in debt and unable to pay medical bills to an international power broker who bragged about his luxury watch collection.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
Fred Daibes
Daibes spent the first decade of his life in a Palestinian refugee camp before emigrating to New Jersey.
When he was 20, his father died, and he had to drop out of college to support his four younger siblings.
Daibes spent the next several years building a successful career as a luxury real estate developer and in the process, struck up a friendship with Nadine Menendez. He also scored an invite to her wedding.
Prosecutors claim Daibes’s “fingerprints or DNA” was found on envelopes of cash taken from the Menendez home during a 2022 raid and that serial numbers traced two gold bars back to Daibes.
They also allege the money and gold were bribes paid to Bob Menendez for meddling in a federal bank fraud case against him in which the charges were eventually dismissed.
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Daibes has called Bob and Nadine Menendez “amazing” friends and “as loyal as they come.”
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
