Nadine Menendez is charged along with her husband, Senator Robert Menendez, in a complex bribery scheme. She will undergo a mastectomy.
On Wednesday, a lawyer representing Senator Robert Menendez in his bribery trial painted a picture of a marriage cloaked in secrecy and deception, casting the senator’s wife, Nadine Menendez, as an opportunist who traded on his name.
Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Menendez was projecting a new message: He was a protective husband asking for privacy for his wife, who, he revealed for the first time, was being treated for breast cancer. Ms. Menendez, he said, was preparing to undergo a mastectomy and possible radiation treatment.
“We are of course concerned about the seriousness and advanced stage of the disease,” Mr. Menendez, 70, said in the statement. “We hope and pray for the best results.”
The timing of the announcement, issued by his Senate office, punctuated a remarkable first week of trial. And the revelation served to shine a newly intense spotlight on a couple whose fates are intertwined — but whose priorities may not be.
The statement was issued Thursday morning as Mr. Menendez was in Federal District Court in Manhattan, where he is on trial, charged with accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for political favors for the governments of Egypt and Qatar and for friends in New Jersey.
A day earlier, the senator’s lawyer told jurors that Ms. Menendez, 57, was largely to blame for the gold bars and other lucrative bribes prosecutors say he took as payoffs.