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Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, have asked a federal judge to grant them separate trials, arguing that the couple would be forced to testify against each other if they are tried together.
Nadine Menendez's lawyers said in a court filing Monday that a joint trial with her husband "will undoubtedly prejudice Ms. Menendez’s right to defend herself at a fair trial." The senator's testimony, they said, could include "revealing confidential marital communications" between them that is "essential" to his defense.
The New Jersey Democrat's lawyers submitted a separate filing later that day that included a similar request for his case to be severed from his wife's, saying it would otherwise put him in a "Catch-22" situation. Being tried together as a couple, they argued, “threatens” his right to a fair trial because it would force him to “choose between two fundamental rights: his right to testify in his own defense and his right not to testify against his spouse.”
The senator’s defense team also claimed that federal prosecutors had filed the case in the wrong judicial district and asked the judge to transfer the case to New Jersey, given that the indictment “alleges a series of distinctly New Jersey-based schemes.”
Bob Menendez and his wife were indicted on bribery and corruption charges that allege they accepted cash and gold bars in exchange for political favors to benefit the governments of Qatar and Egypt. Prosecutors also allege that the senator, while serving as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, conspired to act as foreign agent.
The couple and their co-defendants have pleaded not guilty, and Bob Menendez went so far as to claim that he was being targeted because of his ethnicity — an argument that has angered some of his Latino colleagues. He stepped down from his committee position after the indictment, but he has so far resisted calls from colleagues to resign from the Senate.