Nadine Menendez must report to federal prison on July 10 to begin serving her 54-month sentence after a federal appellate court rejected her bid to remain on bail while she appeals her conviction on bribery, extortion, and obstruction of justice charges.
The Justice Department had opposed her bid to delay her bid to postpone her incarceration.
Menendez played a considerable role in the downfall of her husband and co-conspirator, former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez. After a separate trial, a jury found Nadine Menendez guilty on 15 charges, among them bribery, obstruction of justice, and helping her husband become an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government.
Menendez was accused of facilitating the connections between her husband and his bribers, and she herself financially benefited from the transactions, most famously in her receipt of a Mercedes-Benz.
Bob Menendez was sentenced to 11-years in prison and began serving his sentence on June 17, 2025.
In November, the New York Times reported that Menendez had not yet visited her husband in prison.
Nadine Menendez’s trial, meanwhile, was delayed for nearly a year due to her breast cancer diagnosis. Prosecutors were able to use much of the same evidence that led to the conviction of her husband to show how she had used her husband’s Senate position for personal gain.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York had asked for an eight-year prison term; Menendez, citing her youth in war-torn Lebanon and her breast cancer diagnosis, had sought one year.