Former Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, who was convicted of bribery and acting as a foreign agent for Egypt, is seeking President Donald Trump‘s assistance to delay the corruption trial of his wife, Nadine Menendez.
Nadine Menendez’s trial on bribery charges is set to begin Tuesday. Her husband was convicted in January and sentenced to 11 years in prison for accepting gold bars and other gifts from the governments of Egypt and Qatar in exchange for political favors.
Her trial was postponed due to a breast cancer diagnosis, but her husband is now seeking another delay, as she recently underwent reconstructive breast surgery.
Bob Menendez mentioned Trump in his plea on X.
“My wife, who had breast cancer reconstructive surgery just days ago, is being forced by the government to go to trial tomorrow,” he posted. “Only the arrogance of the SDNY can be so cruel and inhumane. They should let her fully recover!”
In January, Bob Menendez appealed to Trump by suggesting that both his and Trump’s criminal charges were politically motivated.
“President Trump was right,” he said in January. “This process is political and is corrupted to its core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.”
The former senator apparently changed his stance on Trump’s legal troubles after voting twice to impeach him. He previously criticized Trump for his efforts to discredit the accusations against him from the Mueller investigation, arguing at the time that Trump’s charges were not politically motivated and that it was entirely plausible he was compromised by the Russian government.
“I’m talking about the entirely legitimate question of whether Donald Trump could be compromised by the Russian government,” Bob Menendez said on the Senate floor in 2019. “It’s more than a legitimate question.”
Prosecutors argued during the former senator’s trial that his wife acted as a “go-between” for her husband and his co-defendants.
Bob Menendez’s defense attorney, Avi Weitzman, blamed his wife, portraying her as hiding her financial problems from her husband and keeping him “in the dark about what she was asking others to give her.”
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“She tried to get cash and assets any which way she could,” Weitzman said.
However, prosecutors rejected this depiction and said Bob Menendez called “the shots.”