The judge presiding over the bribery trial of Sen. Bob Menendez indefinitely delayed the trial of the New Jersey Democrat’s wife Nadine Menendez, a co-defendant in the case who’s undergoing cancer treatments, the court docket showed Tuesday.
“The trial of this matter is adjourned sine die,” U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein wrote in a brief ruling he issued Monday, using a Latin and legal term for without a date.
Nadine Menendez’s lawyer, Barry Coburn, declined to comment. She was charged along with her husband in an indictment last year alleging they traded political favors for hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold bars and cash from three New Jersey businessmen, but her trial was delayed after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Sen. Menendez released a statement in May, saying, “Nadine is suffering from Grade 3 breast cancer, which will require her to have mastectomy surgery. We are of course concerned about the seriousness and advanced stage of the disease.”
His lawyers, Adam Fee and Avi Weitzman, said in a statement Tuesday that his “highest priority is his wife’s health, and we are pleased that she is being given the time she needs to focus on treatment and recovery.”
Her attorney wrote in a court filing in June that she had “medical equipment implanted in her body and is in intense, chronic pain.”
He added at the time, “we ask the press and the public to give her the time, space and privacy to deal with this challenging health condition as she undergoes surgery and recovery.”
The trial for her husband and two other co-defendants began in May, and the jury began deliberations in the case on Friday. The husband and wife have both pleaded not guilty.
The Menendezes began dating in 2018 and married in 2020.
