NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez’s sobbing wife told a judge that her husband was “not the man I thought he was” before she was sentenced Thursday to 4½ years in prison for selling the powerful New Jersey politician’s influence in exchange for bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car.

U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein sentenced Nadine Menendez, 58, for her April conviction for colluding from 2018 to 2023 with her husband, the former Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a variety of corrupt schemes, some involving assisting the Egyptian government.

Nadine Menendez, tearfully addressing the judge for several minutes before he sentenced her, described her husband as a manipulative liar.

“I put my life in his hands and he strung me like a puppet

See Full Page