Gold Bars, Steakhouse Dinners and Fast Talkers: The Menendez Trial

Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at the bribery trial of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey as it enters its fourth week in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

As former President Donald Trump’s motorcade drove in recent weeks to Manhattan’s criminal courthouse for his hush-money trial, it passed a federal courthouse down the block where a trial is underway of another political figure — Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

With the Trump verdict in, let’s catch up on Menendez’s trial, which began on May 13 and could last another month or so.

Menendez, 70, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, 57, were charged last year with conspiring to accept gold, cash, a Mercedes-Benz and other bribes collectively worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for the senator’s willingness to meddle in criminal prosecutions in New Jersey and to steer aid and weapons to Egypt. A federal indictment says the conspiracy dates to before the couple were married in 2020, and it depicts Nadine Menendez as a kind of go-between among conspirators.

“What else can the love of my life do for you?” she asked during dinner at a Washington steakhouse in one of the meetings she arranged for her husband and Egyptian officials, the indictment says.