The case alleging federal bribery charges against embattled Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has taken a strange turn. New documents filed by Menendez’s legal team this week indicate that he plans to throw his wife under the bus. We didn’t see that coming! The senator’s lawyers claim that the wife, Nadine Menendez, withheld information from him. They claim the wife’s dishonesty led Sen. Menendez to believe that there was nothing illegal going on when all those gold bars and stacks of cash started showing up around the house.

“While these explanations, and the marital communications on which they rely, will tend to exonerate Senator Menendez by demonstrating the absence of any improper intent on Senator Menendez’s part, they may inculpate Nadine by demonstrating the ways in which she withheld information from Senator Menendez or otherwise led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place,” the filing states.

His attorneys also hilariously claim that Bob Menendez is an “American patriot” who is being unfairly targeted by an out-of-control Department of Justice. The leftwing Senator is like a big MAGA guy all of a sudden, right? The attorneys say the allegations against him are baseless and a “distortion of the truth.”

Before you sell Dirty Bob Menendez short, however, you should realize that this is not the first time that the Department of Justice has taken a run at him. He previously faced bribery and corruption charges over his relationship with a wealthy dentist from the Dominican Republic, who was a major campaign donor. The dentist used to take Menendez on lavish trips in the Dominican Republic on his private jet, which Menendez never reported as gifts.

This prior bribery case took place before Menendez married Nadine, who he now appears to be ready to discard to save his career. While on those trips to his donor’s mansion, New Jersey’s senior US Senator is alleged to have participated in orgies with underage prostitutes that were provided by his rich friend. While the FBI was all too happy to investigate and charge Menendez with bribery, the bureau remained oddly disinterested in the allegations that a US Senator on the Foreign Relations Committee was having sex with trafficked teenage girls on foreign soil.

The Daily Caller and other news outlets even sent reporters to the Dominican Republic to interview some of the girls that Menendez allegedly had relations with. One of the girls said she remembered “Bobby” well and that he treated her very nicely. She was thrilled that the elder statesman from New Jersey had remembered her seventeenth birthday and brought her a present. She also provided photographs of her in a bikini on the wealthy donor’s yacht, with Sen. Menendez putting his grubby hands all over her.

But again, the FBI never pursued any of the allegations that Menendez was having sex with trafficked teenagers.

Reporters also talked to Menendez’s neighbors in New Jersey, who said that he used to welcome a different attractive young woman in a prom dress into his apartment every night (before he married Nadine). The neighbors complained that the walls were just too thin to be living next to Bob Menendez. They probably also cursed the invention of Viagra.

Menendez got away with all of that when the Obama Justice Department went after him, and he’s so confident that he will beat the rap this time that he’s running for reelection this year—while he’s on trial for bribery! We knew that Menendez was a slimeball from all the previous allegations against him, but we never suspected he’d be capable of throwing his own wife under the bus. We’ll see if that tactic works or not. His trial starts this summer.