Nadine Menendez was sentenced to 4 and a half years in jail final month for bribery and corruption, her husband, disgraced US Senator Bob Menendez is at present serving 11 years on the identical costs.
A Jury discovered the couple took in lots of of hundreds in money, gold bars and a Mercedes convertible after Menendez misused his highly effective place on the Senate International Relations Committee to assist two businessmen safe contracts and escape prison prosecution. They had been additionally discovered responsible of conspiring to assist Egypt safe US weapons and canopy up the homicide of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
On this tailored excerpt from their new e-book “Gold Bar Bob: The Downfall of the Most Corrupt US Senator“, authors Isabel Vincent and Thomas Jason Anderson describe how the couple first met.
Statuesque blonde Nadine Arslanian was Bob Menendez’s dream lady.
The New Jersey Democrat observed her immediately throughout a fundraiser for his reelection marketing campaign on the lavish Saddle River residence of Armenian American donors in 2010.
Arslanian, an Armenian-American divorcée who had grown up within the lap of luxurious in Lebanon earlier than her household fled the nation’s civil battle, was in a relationship on the time.
For his half, the senator was relationship Gwendolyn Beck, one other leggy blonde who was a cash supervisor for Jeffrey Epstein, and has been accused of collaborating in his seedy way of life. When Beck ran as an impartial for Congress in Virginia in 2014, Epstein donated to her election marketing campaign.
Nadine performed it cool throughout that first encounter, at the same time as mates say she was drawn to the highly effective US Senator like a moth to a flame.
“Even when she was concerned… she was at all times in search of the subsequent neatest thing,” mentioned clothier and former “Actual Housewives of New Jersey” star Kim De Paola. “When she used to come back to my occasions, she had her boobs hanging [out] … at all times flaunting herself.”
Nadine, a hanger-on at events with the “Actual Housewives” and the forged of “Mob Wives” in New Jersey, was at all times chasing folks with standing. Though she would later inform the New York Occasions she had no thought Menendez was a US senator when she met him, nobody in her circle of suburban socialites believed her.
“Nadine was at all times impressed with energy,” mentioned a buddy. “Once I heard she was relationship Bob, I used to be like ‘Oh my God!’ However I wasn’t all that shocked.”
“It was ‘Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob!’ when she began relationship him,” mentioned one other buddy, including that for at the very least a number of months she appeared not to have the ability to select between Menendez and Doug Anton, a star legal professional who had as soon as defended the at present imprisoned R. Kelly.
Menendez, whose first indictment on corruption and bribery led to a hung jury in 2017, finally broke up with Beck.
In New Jersey, he moved in the identical social circles as Nadine and so they quickly grew to become romantically concerned, though he later broke up together with her when she couldn’t determine who she needed to be with.
Though Nadine was concerned with Anton, she was nonetheless excited by Bob, calling him on his sixty fourth birthday on January 1, 2018, and suggesting that they meet to have fun his acquittal.
“Nadine desires the world,” mentioned a former boyfriend who dated her after the divorce from her first husband, New Jersey actual property developer Raffi Arslanian. “She desires a seat at each campfire.”
Identified within the Armenian group as “psycho Barbie,” Nadine had allegedly stalked an ex. She was additionally accused of keying his new girlfriend’s automobile and displaying up at his residence on Christmas Day in 2010 together with her two kids to attempt to win him again, in keeping with a restraining order.
“Nadine at all times believed she was above the legislation,” the previous boyfriend mentioned.
With Menendez, mates mentioned she performed laborious to get, although, pitting him towards Anton. After they started relationship once more in 2018, Menendez allegedly despatched Capitol law enforcement officials from Washington DC to his rival’s workplace in Hackensack, New Jersey to get him out of the image.
“He scared the s—t out of Doug,” mentioned John Alite, a former Gotti crime household affiliate and buddy of Nadine’s.
Nonetheless, Nadine refused to decide to Menendez. A buddy of the couple typically noticed her hanging out with the lawyer at a favourite cigar lounge, then occurring to fulfill Menendez for dinner at Regina’s Steakhouse and Grill, a favourite restaurant of the senator’s in close by Teaneck.
Dealing with foreclosures on her residence in Englewood Cliffs, Nadine lastly selected Menendez, who, a supply says, “promised her the world.”
Nadine — who Bob known as “Bubbles,” in reference to her décolletage — wasted no time asking the highly effective Democratic senator if he would meet with some Egyptian officers who had been mates with a few of her mates in New Jersey.
“May you please talk about the nation’s relations with the Worldwide Financial Fund and different massive initiatives, such because the ‘new Suez Canal,’”she texted him.
“Actually???” Menendez texted again. Moments later, Menendez went on-line and searched “Egypt and Worldwide Financial Fund.”
Conferences with the Egyptians happened at Bob’s favourite steakhouses in New Jersey and Washington DC. Quickly the couple was concerned in serving to to safe a profitable halal certification contract from the federal government of Egypt for Wael Hana, one in every of Nadine’s mates and a co-conspirator of their scheme.
Menendez additionally “ghost wrote” letters for Egypt when the nation was making an attempt to foyer his fellow senators to launch a maintain on $300 million in army assist to the nation.
At Nadine’s urging, Menendez additionally helped Egyptian intelligence officers cowl up the homicide of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed and dismembered when he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. Egyptian intelligence had supplied the medicine to kill the Washington Submit columnist.
Shortly after Khashoggi’s homicide, Nadine hit and killed a pedestrian in Bogota, New Jersey. She insisted she “did nothing mistaken,” and was by no means examined for alcohol or medicine. Fortunately for her, one in every of her socialite mates who was ready to have dinner together with her at an area restaurant despatched a well-connected former legislation enforcement official to the scene to help her.
Nadine appeared to indicate little concern for 49-year-old Richard Koop, who lay on the darkish roadway close to her totaled Mercedes. She wanted a brand new automobile, and appealed to Hana and his connections to get it for her in change for the favors that Menendez — who she dubbed “l’a amour de ma vie (the love of my life)” — would do for them.
Nadine acquired a model new Mercedes convertible from the couple’s benefactors. She would go on to marry Menendez at an Armenian church in Queens in 2020.
A number of years later, after federal brokers discovered lots of of hundreds of {dollars} and gold bars stuffed into sneakers and the Senator’s jacket pockets at their residence, they had been each convicted on bribery and corruption costs in separate trials.
At trial Menendez blamed his spouse — by that point struggling with most cancers — for the whole lot.
In her tearful handle to the decide throughout her sentencing listening to in September, Nadine, in flip, blamed her husband.
In looking for to attenuate her time in jail, Nadine — who has been most cancers free for a yr, in keeping with reviews — prevailed upon her mates and relations to put in writing letters to the decide testifying to her “good character.”
Probably the most memorable got here from Nikole Juliano, her hairdresser.
“Over my profession, I’ve touched lots of of heads — lots of them each single week for years — and but Nadine stands out in a manner few folks do,” she wrote.
Juliano meant to extoll Nadine’s kindness and concern for others, opinions many now dispute.
