New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez’s wife toted a pricey Chanel purse to Manhattan federal court Wednesday as she and her embattled husband pleaded not guilty to pocketing bribes — including cash and $100,000 in gold bars.
The veteran Democrat, 69, and his 56-year-old wife, Nadine, strolled out of the Lower Manhattan courthouse following their brief first hearing in the sweeping corruption case — with Menendez’s spouse getting slapped with stricter bail conditions.
Facing mounting calls from fellow Dems to resign, Menendez, wearing a dark pinstriped suit, sat with his hands tightly clasped in his lap as he was ordered released on a $100,000 bond.
Magistrate Judge Ona Wang ordered him to surrender any personal passports, but said the senator could still travel outside the US for official government purposes while his case is pending.
Meanwhile, his wife — who prosecutors allege played a key role in collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes — was ordered to be released on a $250,000 bond secured by the couple’s Englewood Cliffs, NJ, home.
Menendez ignored questions from a mass of reporters as he led his wife, who was clutching her vintage designer purse, by the hand out of the courthouse following the hearing.
The quilted Chanel, which sat alongside Nadine during the hearing, can fetch as much as $2,300 on some resale sites.
The defiant senator has previously denied the allegations that he accepted hundreds of thousands in bribes in exchange for wielding his political influence to help the Egyptian government and do favors for three wealthy Garden State businessmen.
Two of the businessmen charged in the case — Jose Uribe, 56, and Fred Daibes, 66 — also appeared in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty. Uribe and Daibes were released on bonds of $1 million and $2 million, respectively.
The third businessmen, Wael Hana, 40, entered his not guilty plea on Tuesday and was released on $5 million bond.
Menendez, who was forced to step down as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee after he was slapped with the federal indictment last week, has said he is confident he will be exonerated and has no intention of leaving the Senate.
Still, the calls for him to resign continued to mount Wednesday, with Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, saying “he should step down.”
More than half of Senate Democrats have now said Menendez should quit, including fellow New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who said the federal indictment includes ”shocking allegations of corruption and specific, disturbing details of wrongdoing.”
According to the indictment, a raid on Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs home in June 2022 uncovered nearly $500,000 in cash — much of it stashed in the pockets of official government jackets emblazoned with his name, as well as envelopes, closets and a safe.
At least 13 gold bars worth roughly $150,000 and a 2019 Mercedes C-Class were also uncovered, the indictment alleged.
Menendez insisted Monday that he kept the piles of cash found in his home because he’s the son of Cuban immigrants.
“For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies, and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba,” he told reporters at a news conference.
“Now this may seem old-fashioned, but these were monies drawn from my personal savings account based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years.”
He did not explain how the gold bars came to be in his home.
Prosecutors allege repeated actions by Menendez to benefit the government of Egypt during the alleged scheme.
Menendez allegedly provided “substantial military aid to Egypt” including by handing over sensitive US government information to Egyptian officials and ghost-writing a letter to fellow senators urging them to release a hold on $300 million in aid to Egypt, according to the indictment.
He is also accused of trying to interfere in criminal probes involving associates, including pushing to install a federal prosecutor in New Jersey whom the senator believed he could influence to derail a criminal case against Daibes.
This is the second federal corruption case in a decade against Menendez, whose last trial involving different allegations ended with a hung jury in 2017.
