Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez requested a federal choose on Thursday to delay his end-of-January sentencing on bribery costs and appearing as an agent of the Egyptian authorities, saying his household would undergo a “tremendous emotional toll” if the New Jersey Democrat have been sentenced throughout his spouse’s trial.
His legal professionals instructed Decide Sidney H. Stein in a letter that Nadine Menendez would face a jury which may discover it unimaginable to not 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 legal professionals wrote.
They really helpful transferring the sentencing to a date instantly after his spouse’s trial, which could not conclude till March.
The 70-year-old Menendez resigned within the weeks after his July conviction on 16 costs, together with bribery, extortion, trustworthy providers fraud and obstruction of justice. He has challenged the conviction after prosecutors not too long ago revealed that jurors have been permitted to see some proof throughout deliberations that was speculated to be excluded from the trial.
His spouse, whose trial was postponed after it was realized she would wish surgical procedure for remedy of breast most cancers, faces a lot of the identical proof as her husband in Manhattan federal courtroom. Her trial is ready to start Jan. 21 whereas her husband is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 29.
Bob Menendez’s legal professionals wrote that the previous 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 stated. “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 choose, a lawyer for Nadine Menendez urged the choose to reject a suggestion by prosecutors that the sentencing happen instantly earlier than 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,” lawyer Barry Coburn wrote.
A spokesperson for prosecutors declined to remark.
Prosecutors say practically $150,000 in gold bars, together with $480,000 in money and a Mercedes-Benz convertible discovered throughout a 2022 FBI raid on the Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, residence that Nadine Menendez shared together with her husband got to the couple over a four-year span in order that the senator would do favors for 3 New Jersey businessmen.
Two of the three businessmen have been convicted together with Menendez whereas a 3rd businessman pleaded responsible to costs and testified at his trial.
On the time he was charged in fall 2023, Menendez held a strong place as chairman of the Senate Overseas Relations Committee, a put up he was pressured to surrender.
