Just hours before he was due to report to federal prison, convicted ex-NJ Democratic Senator Bob Menendez decided to spend his final few hours of freedom with another convicted felon: His wife.
Menendez was seen spending some of his final hours as a free man yesterday running errands around town with wife Nadine.
The disgraced former Democratic Party power couple was spotted walking side by side into an Englewood Cliffs, NJ, credit union just hours before the ex-senator was expected to report to a Pennsylvania federal prison to begin serving an 11-year sentence for bribery and corruption.
Menendez, 71, will be behind bars at the Federal Correctional Institution Schuylkill in Minersville, Pa. Mendendez’s wife, Nadine, 58, was found guilty of federal corruption charges in April for her role in the bribery scheme.
According to The New York Post, the medium-security facility, which has an adjacent minimum-security satellite camp, houses more than 1,200 inmates and is about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman’s New Jersey home.
Menendez was sentenced in January after being found guilty last July of trading favors for foreign governments and businessmen in exchange for cash, gold bars and even a Mercedes-Benz convertible.
Federal agents who raided the Menendezes’ New Jersey house in June 2022 found 13 gold bars worth $150,000 inside a bedroom safe — which earned him the nickname “Gold Bar Bob” — and nearly $500,000 in cash stuffed in jackets, boots and envelopes all over the house.
Menendez sold favors for Egypt and Qatar while go-betweens showered him and Nadine with the bribes. Nadine, who has yet to be sentenced, could also face decades behind bars.
Menendez, who twice voted to impeach President Donald Trump during his first term, has reportedly been trying to secure a pardon from Trump as he prepares to head to prison.
Menendez has repeatedly claimed innocence, but resigned from the Senate under pressure last August after being convicted.
Menendez will become the prison’s most famous inmate, though other notable residents include Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa, a former gas-station tycoon dubbed the “Gas Station Gotti” by The Post after he was convicted of ordering murders in a bid to keep secret a plot to rip off customers by tampering with pumps.