Nadine Menendez, the wife of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, asked a judge on Tuesday to delay her trial on bribery charges because of what her lawyers described as a “serious medical condition” that will require surgery and an extended recovery period.
Ms. Menendez, 57, did not publicly disclose the nature of the medical issue but indicated that she received a recent diagnosis for a condition that will require surgery within four to six weeks and potentially significant follow-up treatment. Ms. Menendez’s lawyers, in a two-page letter to the judge, said they were providing further details in a separate submission that was filed under seal to protect Ms. Menendez’s privacy.
“Given her medical circumstances, Ms. Menendez is not able to assist her counsel in preparing for trial in the next four weeks,” her lawyers wrote to Judge Sidney H. Stein of Federal District Court in Manhattan. The trial of Ms. Menendez, her husband and two New Jersey businessmen is scheduled to start on May 6, but her lawyers said she would not be in “physical or psychological condition” to participate.
The judge could grant a delay to Ms. Menendez but order the senator and the businessmen to go to trial as planned next month. The Menendezes have each asked the judge for separate trials, a request the judge has yet to rule on.
Ms. Menendez’s request for a delay adds to an already complicated array of legal issues to be decided before the couple stands trial on what prosecutors have described as a wide-ranging international bribery conspiracy. They are charged with accepting cash, gold bars and a luxury convertible in exchange for the senator’s willingness to use his political influence at home and on behalf of the governments of Egypt and Qatar. All four defendants have pleaded not guilty.
On Friday, Ms. Menendez’s lawyers asked to be removed from the case for an undisclosed reason. Prosecutors had indicated that they were likely to call her lawyers to testify at the trial in an apparent effort to prove that Ms. Menendez obstructed justice during the government’s investigation. Judge Stein had made it clear that Ms. Menendez’s lawyers would not be permitted to both defend her and to testify, and he had encouraged the parties to try to reach a compromise. The judge has not yet acted on the lawyers’ request to withdraw from the case.
The disclosure of Ms. Menendez’s health trouble and her request for a postponement also comes weeks after the senator publicly indicated that he was eager to get the trial underway.
Mr. Menendez has bowed out of the state’s Democratic primary but said that he hoped to run for re-election in November as an independent if he was exonerated, as he said he expected to be. He also declined to pursue an immediate appeal of a recent ruling by Judge Stein not to dismiss the charges against him, with his lawyers telling the judge that the senator’s decision was “principally motivated by his desire to proceed to trial and establish his innocence without further delay.”
Judge Stein had ordered a hearing on Thursday to rule on pending motions in the case, and he could take up the matter of Ms. Menendez’s request for a postponement at that time.
Among the requests awaiting action by the judge are the motions by Mr. and Ms. Menendez for separate trials — a request the government opposes. Mr. Menendez’s lawyers have argued that trying them together “threatens the senator’s right to a fair trial by, among other things, forcing him to choose between two fundamental rights: his right to testify in his own defense and his right not to testify against his spouse.”
But if the judge refuses to grant separate trials, a postponement for Ms. Menendez would seemingly require a delay of Mr. Menendez’s trial as well.
Lawyers for Mr. Menendez did not respond to a request for comment on Ms. Menendez’s request for a trial delay. Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, declined to comment.
Writing to Judge Stein on Tuesday, Ms. Menendez’s lawyers asked for a hearing in two months for their client to provide the court with an update on her medical condition and treatment plan and “a feasible timetable for rescheduling her trial date.”
Ms. Menendez, the mother of two adult children, married Mr. Menendez in 2020 after a yearlong engagement. Prosecutors have depicted her as a key figure in the alleged bribery conspiracy. Several of the bribes, according to the indictment, were provided to Ms. Menendez, including a new Mercedes-Benz convertible, a low- or no-show job and mortgage payments on her house, which was facing foreclosure.
She and Mr. Menendez continue to live in the house in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Investigators who searched the home in June 2022 found $486,000 in cash and 13 bars of gold bullion.
