Why Nadine Menendez still hasn’t visited her husband in prison

Bob Menendez was at the pinnacle of power in the U.S. Senate when he and his girlfriend, Nadine Tabourian Arslanian, wed after a whirlwind romance. Three years later, their overheard terms of endearment — “What else can the love of my life do for you?” — would become damning evidence supporting explosive bribery charges against Bob Menendez, a longtime Democratic power broker, and his new wife.

In court, each blamed the other. Both were convicted. He began serving an 11-year sentence in June; she is expected to report to prison this summer after undergoing breast cancer surgery.

But in the five months that Menendez, 71, has been in prison, the couple has been barred by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons from seeing each other.

In September, after the judge, Sidney H. Stein, sentenced Nadine Menendez to 4½ years in prison, he appeared taken aback when told that she had been blocked from visiting her husband. He went out of his way to include a recommendation to the prison bureau in Nadine Menendez’s official criminal judgment, noting “the court has no objection to Nadine Menendez visiting her husband at the correctional facility where he may be held.”

The prison has denied several of Bob Menendez’s written requests for his wife to visit on weekends and holidays, Nadine Menendez and her lawyer, Sarah Krissoff, said. Other family members have been allowed to visit, Nadine Menendez said.

The prison system’s refusal to let Menendez visit her husband appears to be connected to her status as a co-defendant in the bribery case, Krissoff told Stein in court in September.

Two months later, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said prosecutors still had no objection to Menendez visiting her husband in prison.

But Krissoff said she had been unable to obtain permission even for a single visit to allow the couple to discuss Nadine Menendez’s medical care in person.

An official at Allenwood Federal Correctional Institution, the low-security men’s lockup in Pennsylvania where the former senator is serving his time, said in an email that the prison was unable to answer questions because of “privacy, safety and security reasons.”

At the bureau’s headquarters in Washington, a spokesperson, Emery Nelson, offered a similar response and directed a reporter to the agency’s regulations, which note that visits by family members are permitted “absent strong circumstances that preclude visiting.”