Sen. Bob Menendez may point the finger at his wife, newly unsealed documents show

Sen. Bob Menendez may plan to blame his wife for actions that led to a federal bribery case against him, a newly unsealed court filing suggests.

The senator’s legal team plans to try to show the “absence of any improper intent on Senator Menendez’s part” by “demonstrating the ways” in which his wife, Nadine Menendez, “withheld information from Sen. Menendez or otherwise led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place.”

In a mid-March legal filing, Menendez’s legal team tried to keep those exact words under seal because they believed having that defense strategy public would taint the jury pool. But a reporter at NBC New York and then a coalition of media organizations, including POLITICO, fought to make those sentences public. On Tuesday, federal judge Sidney Stein ordered their release.

Previously, Menendez’s legal team said having this particular defense strategy public “threatens to bias the jury pool and, consequently, to interfere with Senator Menendez’s and his wife’s right to a fair trial.”

The language it sought to redact came in part of a larger 50-page legal filing that argued the senator and his wife should have separate trials. Menendez’s attorneys said spousal privilege — which prevents one spouse from being forced to testify against another and allows one spouse to prevent the other from testifying — would complicate his defense against the federal charges.

Last week, his wife was granted a separate trial, after she asked for a delay citing a “serious medical condition” that federal prosecutors and the judge took seriously. The senator’s trial is expected to begin on May 6 in Manhattan along with two co-defendants Wael Hana and Fred Daibes. The senator faces corruption charges alleging he accepted gold bars, wads of cash and gifts to act as an unregistered foreign agent, interfere in state and federal prosecutions and help Hana’s Halal certification business keep a lucrative exclusive contract with the Egyptian government.

But that trial date seems a bit uncertain. Now prosecutors are seeking a delay because of issues involving an attorney for one of the other defendants. Judge Stein plans to hear arguments about that delay on Wednesday morning.

Nadine Menendez’s trial is set for later this summer.