CNN
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They had only been dating for a few months, but Nadine Arslanian, who would eventually become Sen. Bob Menendez’s second wife, had a very particular request for the New Jersey Democrat.
In a 2018 text message about his upcoming remarks at the Egyptian Embassy, Arslanian asked, “could you please” discuss Cairo’s improving relations with the International Monetary Fund and other capital projects, including the “new Suez Canal.”
Menendez seemed puzzled.
“Really???” he replied.
One minute later, according to court documents, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee went online and searched “Egypt and International Monetary Fund.” He then clicked on a page titled “Frequently Asked Questions on Egypt and the IMF.”
Nadine offered one final push in the exchange. “Will said please just speak about the IMF. That’s important,” she told the senator, referring to Wael “Will” Hana,” a co-defendant of the senator’s at his corruption trial.
The third week of that sprawling trial has featured hundreds of text messages, emails, images and voicemails sent between the senator, his future wife, Hana and an array of friends and business associates with alleged roles in the bribery scheme at the heart of the government’s case.
Nadine Menendez, though, has been the central character in the communications, alternately cooing in French at her new boyfriend on phone calls, trying to facilitate meetings between Menendez and Egyptian officials, and asking for Menendez’s prayers – adding that his were almost always answered.
Attorneys on both sides have battled over the nature of Nadine’s role in what prosecutors described as the senator’s “politics-for-profit” operation – an enterprise, they say, that secured the couple hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes.
In exchange for gold bars, cash, a $60,000 luxury car and more, prosecutors allege, Menendez, 70, acted as an agent of the Egyptian government and delivered a slew of favors for friends in the US, including Hana, who enjoyed a monopoly in the lucrative business of halal meat certification.
The senator and his co-defendants have all denied any wrongdoing.
Prosecutors have called Nadine, who is also charged but is not slated to go on trial until late July, a mere “go-between” for Menendez’s corrupt acts.
The defense has portrayed her as more involved and connected – a force behind the alleged crimes, parlaying her romance with the senator into a series of gifts and loans from local businessmen in exchange for her cajoling him to deliver, with a blinkered view of the wider arrangement, on her promises.
‘My very handsome senator’
Over three days, prosecutor Paul Monteleoni and FBI special agent Michael Coughlin, from the witness stand, went line-by-line through hundreds of pages of correspondence. When Menendez lawyer Avi Weitzman rose Thursday to cross-examine Coughlin, he argued that the documents on display had been cherry-picked by prosecutors, stripped of context, and given to misleading conclusions.
The unique dynamics of Menendez’s relationship were on display in the missives.
In late February 2018, shortly after they began dating, Nadine left the senator a voice message.
“It’s me calling my very handsome senator,” she said, “I have a favor to ask you. Hopefully, you can do it.”
The ask was for Menendez to meet with Egyptian Maj. Gen. Khaled Shawky at the Arab state’s embassy. Even 25 minutes would do, Nadine said, mostly because Shawky would require “some kind of clearance from Egypt” to hold the conversation outside the building. She told the senator it would “not (be) worth the trip” to Washington, DC, if he couldn’t be in attendance for the meeting with Shawky, before signing off, “I miss you.”
A few weeks earlier, before their romantic relationship had begun in earnest, Nadine texted Menendez to celebrate the Justice Department’s dismissal of outstanding bribery charges against him. The case had ended in a 2017 mistrial, and the DOJ decision meant Menendez could run for another term without the specter of a retrial hanging over his head. (The couple married in 2020.)
“Now re-election!!!!” Nadine wrote to Menendez,…
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