Nadine Menendez wife of ex-Sen. Gold Bar Bob Menendez convicted of sprawling bribery scheme

Nadine Menendez was convicted Monday of cooking up a crooked scheme with her disgraced husband — ex-New Jersey Sen.Bob Menendez — to pocket gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz and other bribes.Jurors found the 58-year-old Englewood Cliffs resident guilty of federal bribery and conspiracy charges following about eight hours of deliberations over two days.It came months after Bob Menendez’s conviction for his role in the sprawling corruption web, in which the couple leveraged his lofty Senate post to line both of their pockets.The Garden State Democrat stepped down from his Senate post and is set to report to prison in June to serve an 11-year sentence.Nadine was the “go-between” connecting Bob with businessmen who funneled bribes to them from the Egyptian and Qatari governments, Manhattan federal prosecutors said.In exchange, the pilloried pol leveraged his powerful post as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to lobby colleagues to unfreeze $300 million in Egyptian military aid that had been held up due to human rights concerns, and dole out other valuable favors, jurors heard at a one-month trial.“What else can the love of my life do for you?” Nadine told one Egyptian official while sitting alongside her cigar-puffing hubby during a May 2019 dinner at Morton’s Steakhouse, evidence revealed.Former Garden State insurance broker Jose Uribe testified that he bribed Nadine with a new Mercedes-Benz C-300 in exchange for her husband’s help shutting down a criminal probe.“Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes,” Nadine texted her husband after receiving the first payment toward the new car, using the French phrase for “love of my life.”FBI agents who raided the couple’s Englewood Hills home found the luxury car parked in their garage, and more than $150,000 in gold bars stored inside Nadine’s safe.

Jurors saw more than $400,000 in cash stuffed into envelopes and strewn across the home, including insi...