Senator Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were both charged last fall in a broad federal corruption case, in which they were accused of accepting cash and gold bribes.
Now their marriage is at the center of a new dispute in the case, according to legal papers filed late Monday.
Ms. Menendez is asking a Manhattan judge to sever her case from that of her husband. In her request, she said that she understood Senator Menendez might wish to testify at his trial, “and that his testimony could include revealing confidential marital communications with Ms. Menendez that Senator Menendez deems essential and material to his defense.”
Ms. Menendez wants to maintain the confidentiality of her communications with her husband, her lawyers wrote to the judge, Sidney H. Stein, of Federal District Court.
If they were tried together, the lawyers said, “the court would be presented with an irreconcilable conflict between husband and wife with respect to the admissibility of confidential marital communications.”
The unusual request comes after Mr. Menendez took to the floor of the Senate a week ago to offer an aggressive rebuttal to the charges against him. He, his wife and a New Jersey businessman, Wael Hana, have all been accused of participating in a conspiracy to exchange political favors for gold bars; to act as an unregistered agent of Egypt; to take bribes to help the government of Qatar; and to try to block criminal investigations of allies in New Jersey.
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