Prosecutors told a judge on Tuesday that Nadine Menendez deserves a seven-year prison sentence for her role in a massive bribery plot that cost her husband his senator office and landed him in jail for over a decade. 

Menendez, 58, the wife of disgraced former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), had an integral part in the corruption of her husband’s deals and schemes, according to federal prosecutors. She was convicted for her crimes in April, a year after her husband was found guilty, the Associated Press reported. 

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The former senator had been under investigation for years over suspicions of corruption. In Oct. 2023, then-Sen. Menendez was charged with providing “sensitive U.S. Government information and took other steps that secretly aided the Government of Egypt” and not registering as an “agent of a foreign government.” In 2024, federal prosecutors charged Menendez with using his influence as a senator to help the government of Qatar with questionable real estate development deals in exchange for lavish gifts and other bribes.

“The defendant’s extensive, deliberate, and exceedingly serious criminal conduct calls out for a substantial sentence,” federal prosecutors said. “She corruptly agreed and promised that her boyfriend and then husband, a United States Senator, would use his power and his office to secretly act on behalf of the people who were lining their pockets.”

The senator’s wife also prospered through corrupt promises to “influence national security and foreign relations” by assuring her husband’s promised support for billions of dollars in military aid to Egypt, according to the Associated Press.

Her lawyers maintained that she was just an innocent victim who was taken advantage of “by men.”

“Despite all of the Government’s efforts to present her as a vixen, the reality is far from that,” the senator’s wife’s lawyer asserted. “Her entire life has been marked by men who have taken advantage of her, and harmed her, in myriad ways. An extended sentence is not warranted, needed, or appropriate under these circumstances.”

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Still, federal prosecutors maintain that she played a vital role in Menendez’s corruption and deserves punishment accordingly. 

“In short, the defendant put the power of Menendez’s office up for sale in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes, including cash, gold, paychecks for a fake job, and a Mercedes-Benz convertible,” said federal prosecutors.