How a Private Health Crisis Has Loomed Over 2 Very Public Trials

Her trial had just resumed after being suspended for three days. And Nadine Menendez, charged by federal prosecutors with orchestrating a complex international bribery scheme, had something to say.

It involved a lapel pin.

“We have a client instruction,” her lawyer, Barry Coburn, told the judge about a legal argument that was being hashed out in private. “The client wishes it to be in open court.”

With that nudge, Ms. Menendez’s breast cancer diagnosis, which has hung over the case for months, once again took center stage.

“We obviously all feel for her situation,” a prosecutor, Daniel C. Richenthal, said. He was concerned, however, that the adornment — a pink breast cancer awareness pin — might be “distracting to the jury and may cause the jury to speculate as to why Ms. Menendez was absent and why she was crying.”

“Like any other political or policy symbol,” he said, “we would ask that Ms. Menendez remove the pin.”

The judge denied the request, the pin stayed on and the trial continued.

After three weeks of testimony, the government is nearing the end of its case against Ms. Menendez, who is accused of taking bribes and shuttling messages to her husband, Robert Menendez, a former U.S. senator convicted last summer of trading his political influence for cash, gold and a Mercedes-Benz convertible.

Ms. Menendez’s lawyers could begin calling defense witnesses as early as Monday.

She has pleaded not guilty, and Mr. Coburn has said that prosecutors presented a “nefarious” depiction of the events and a “grossly inaccurate” portrait of Ms. Menendez’s role in the alleged plot.

“There will be an absolute, utter failure of proof in this case with respect to knowledge and intent,” he said in an opening statement.

The audacity of the claims contained in the indictment against the former senator, who was charged with steering aid and weapons to Egypt in exchange for bribes, made his trial a major legal and political affair that sometimes drew standing-room-only crowds. Once one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington, Mr. Menendez was the first senator to ever be charged with acting as an agent of a foreign government, imbuing the proceeding with international intrigue and history-making ramifications.

There has been limited news media interest in Ms. Menendez’s trial, which has involved a recitation of testimony that is nearly identical to that at the senator’s trial.

But last week’s dust-up over a decorative pin was a vivid reminder of the powerful grip that a personal health crisis has had on the government’s bribery case.

Married in 2020, the couple were set to be tried together last year, along with two other co-defendants. But the judge, Sidney H. Stein, agreed to sever the cases and delayed Ms. Menendez’s trial for months after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

She underwent a double mastectomy, and her husband went to trial without her. That freed the former senator’s lawyers to argue that Mr. Menendez was an unwitting spouse duped by his “dazzling” wife, who had kept him in the dark about “what she was asking others to give her.”

The strategy proved unsuccessful, and in January Mr. Menendez, 71, was sentenced to serve 11 years in prison, the longest criminal penalty ever imposed on a U.S. senator.

Because of his wife’s illness, however, he was afforded a reprieve.

Judge Stein told Mr. Menendez that he would not need to report to prison until June 6, after his wife’s trial. “I do want him to be able to be present to assist his wife during that period,” the judge said during sentencing.

Mr. Menendez has been helping to shuttle Ms. Menendez back and forth between northern New Jersey, where the couple lives, and the courthouse in Lower Manhattan. And he has posted indignant messages on social media that draw attention to her illness.

“This is the second time in one week that my wife Nadine’s trial had to be postponed because of her physical pain and illness,” he wrote early this month. “This is not Justice!”

But he has not attended the trial.

None of Ms. Menendez’s other relatives or friends have spent much time in court, either.

Ms. Menendez, 58, enters and exits the federal courthouse in Manhattan alone. She is often the only person seated in the courtroom during breaks. Last Thursday, she pulled a tinfoil-wrapped sandwich from her bag and ate lunch at the defense table.

Her trial began a week after she underwent breast reconstruction surgery, which she has said needs to be redone. Jurors have not been told that she is being treated for cancer, but it would be hard for observers to fail to notice her apparent discomfort. She wears a pink surgical mask emblazoned with breast cancer awareness symbols. While seated, she uses her left hand, a pillow or a shawl to support her right breast and arm.

After two weeks of testimony, court was adjourned for three days after she was seen wincing in apparent pain and weeping in the courtroom and the hallway. Then she tripped and nearly fell leaving court last Monday, after testimony from the government’s star witness, Jose Uribe, who has said that he gave Ms. Menendez the Mercedes as a bribe to influence her husband.

She returned the next day with her ankle wrapped in a bandage.

Mr. Menendez is on a list of potential witnesses who could be called to testify in her defense. But Mr. Coburn declined to comment on whether there was a strategic or legal reason for his absence at his wife’s trial.

If called, Mr. Menendez “would testify about every aspect of the indictment as it relates to his wife, as well as his relationship with her and her character and reputation for truthfulness,” Mr. Coborn wrote in a filing.

But last week, in a separate filing, Mr. Coburn also acknowledged that he was “grappling with a number of substantive issues concerning whom to call in our case.”

“We believe,” he wrote, “that the defense case will be short.”