Men accused of bribing Sen. Menendez had to ‘keep Nadine happy,’ trial testimony shows

The federal prosecutors now trying Sen. Bob Menendez for corruption have long described his wife as the “go-between” who linked New Jersey’s senior senator with the businessmen accused of giving him gold bars, cash, and other bribes for favors.

Wednesday, they painted a far fuller picture of Nadine Menendez, suggesting through scores of texts, emails, and calls that she became such a greedy complainer that those involved quickly realized she had a key role in securing the senator’s support.

“It is extremely important that we keep Nadine happy,” attorney Howard Dorian texted a man involved in one alleged bribery scheme.

Prosecutor Paul Monteleoni and FBI special agent Michael Coughlin spent Wednesday expanding the chain of correspondence they began building for jurors the day before, aiming to demonstrate how the senator’s younger, blonde, Lebanon-born paramour inserted herself in his political activities soon after they began dating in 2018 — and expected to be compensated in return by those who benefited.

She introduced Sen. Menendez to her longtime friend Wael “Will” Hana, an Egyptian American businessman who’s now one of the senator’s co-defendants. Prosecutors allege Hana bribed the couple to entice the senator to release U.S. military aid and arms to Egypt and otherwise help Egyptian officials, thereby ensuring Hana could get a lucrative monopoly on halal meat exports to Egypt. Menendez was ranking member and chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee before he surrendered his leadership role on the committee shortly after he was indicted last September.

But as Hana succeeded, his relationship with the senator’s wife soured, texts and emails show. She complained to Menendez and his friends that Hana was a “lying a** hole” who had reneged on his promises to bail her Englewood Cliffs home out of foreclosure and give her a $10,000-a-month consulting gig, health insurance, new carpeting, and other items.

“Can you believe Will said he does not need me to make appointments with you to go see you at your office and dinner with you,” she texted Sen. Menendez. “The man has gone crazy after everything I have done for him!!!!!”

She told Dorian, who had represented Hana, that she was “quite disappointed.”

“Wael asked me for a very important dinner and meetings in Washington for next week Monday which I agreed to among other things and he still has not delivered on any of his promises,” she texted Dorian.

Dorian, in turn, worried about “putting out fires.”

“It’s really important that we make sure Nadine stays happy because she’s not. She’s going to cancel the meetings that Wael has set up with Senator Menendez for Monday,” he texted one associate to prod him to act.

The texts also show Nadine Menendez’s role went beyond scheduling meetings. At Hana’s direction, she suggested talking points to the senator, one message shows.

“In your speech, could you please say Egypt now in the right direction with the new government now. With the International Monetary Fund and all the new developments, new capital and the new Suez Canal. Egypt is important to the United States,” she texted Sen. Menendez.

She also claimed to have participated in many of the meetings herself.

“I am in meeting with head of intelligence for Egypt. Soo sorry,” she wrote to one acquaintance trying to reach her.

Prosecutors also presented correspondence to show how Menendez tasked his Senate staff with his wife’s personal business, like drafting her resume when she set up a company to work for Hana that she called Strategic International Business Consultants LLC.

When the business became official with a taxpayer number and a bank account, Nadine Menendez texted a screenshot of its account to her son and daughter, saying, “My consulting company. Every time I’m in the middle person for a deal, I am asking to get paid and this is my consulting company.”

Nadine Menendez also was indicted, but Judge Sidney H. Stein postponed her trial until at least July because she’s battling breast cancer.

Prosecutors spent part of Wednesday linking co-defendant Fred Daibes, an Edgewater real estate developer, to the Egypt scheme.

They introduced as evidence a letter from attorney Andy Aslanian to an Egyptian general offering Daibes’ help in Egypt’s effort to buy several townhouses in Washington, D.C., to house Egyptian government officials. And Hana told another Egyptian official in an encrypted message that Daibes wanted to partner with an Egyptian company to build a resort near the Red Sea in Egypt, invest in U.S. real estate developments with an Egyptian company, and invest in Egyptian manufacturing facilities.

Coughlin is expected to continue testifying Thursday at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan federal courthouse in Manhattan.