Letters seeking leniency for disgraced former senator Bob Menendez ahead of his sentencing give insight into his personal life, including a statement from his MSNBC anchor daughter who says she can’t “understand” his devotion to his wife.
The letter follows Menendez’s trial on bribery charges, during which his his lawyers unsuccessfully tried to lay the blame for illegal activity on his second wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez.
“In these past few months, during the darkest days of his own life, he has navigated his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis with a type of grace and forgiveness I honestly do not understand but admire,” writes Alicia Menendez in her letter to US District Court Judge Sidney Stein, who has presided over the senator’s corruption trial and is scheduled to sentence him on Jan. 29.
Menendez, 71, was convicted on 16 corruption and bribery charges in July along with two New Jersey businessmen, who showered him with hundreds of thousands in cash and gold bars in exchange for official favors.
Menendez vigorously denied the charges and plans to appeal. Nadine faces the same charges, but the trial was delayed following her cancer diagnosis last year. It is now scheduled to begin next month, according to court documents. She has pleaded not guilty.
“The evidence showed Nadine was clearly engaged in conduct without Senator Menendez’s knowledge,” says the latest legal filing, which includes more than 120 letters from the senator’s friends and family to Stein, pleading for a short sentence.
In her letter to the judge, Alicia describes her father as “a scrappy kid from a small town” who was forced to forego his childhood to satisfy his Cuban immigrant family’s expectations of becoming the first in his family to attend college and go to law school — all while dealing with the trauma of his own father’s suicide when he was in his early twenties.
“I’d find him up late at night playing my brother’s Nintendo system,” Alicia writes. “It’s why like an alien observing a different species, he once asked me why other people seem so happy and carefree.
“To be the first in your family to do and be many things — a natural-born US citizen, a college graduate, an attorney, an elected official — is all a great privilege. It is also lonelier than most people can imagine.”
For his part, Menendez’s son, Democratic Rep. Rob Menendez asks Stein to impose a short sentence so his father can spend time with his grandchildren — a benefit he says he did not experience himself.
“Most of my upbringing was marked by having a parent who traveled back and forth between Washington and New Jersey, away for many of those small moments that make a life,” he writes in his December 26 letter, the latest dated letter included in the legal filing.
“It took me a long time to begin to appreciate why those decisions were made having experienced first-hand the challenges they caused.”
In a letter from Menendez’s nephew, an orthopedic surgeon and professor of medicine based in Rochester, NY, he describes the trauma of the suicide of the former senator’s father in the 1970s.
“It was a terrible day for my family,” writes Ronald Gonzalez. “My mother’s scream and tears are something I will never forget.” He adds that it was his “Uncle Bob” who broke the news to his family and took him outside to play catch to ease the shock.
“He took care of all of us that day,” he said. “He has always been a loving family man.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by his older sister, Caridad Gonzalez, who was present in Manhattan federal court along with Alicia, for the trial last year.
“I am writing this letter in support of my baby brother,” writes Gonzalez in her letter to Stein, adding that she speaks and prays with him everyday. “Like our mother, the norm for him was to put others first.”
Menendez’ attorneys also note he has become the “primary caretaker” for his wife during her cancer treatments, “applying medications and treatments, and even changing her tubes following surgery.”
