U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife are facing new charges — this time for allegedly obstructing justice

Federal prosecutors hit U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian, with new charges of obstruction of justice Tuesday, adding to the sweeping bribery and corruption case the couple already face.

The new counts were included in a superseding indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan just months before the New Jersey Democrat’s May trial and only days after a key codefendant struck a deal to plead guilty and cooperate against them.

The new charges are based on accusations detailed in previous indictments against Menendez and Arslanian, but they carry the threat of potential prison time should the couple be convicted.

Prosecutors maintain that after their bribery investigation into the senator burst into public view — with an FBI raid on his Bergen County home and subpoenas seeking documents related to payments he had received from three New Jersey businessmen — Menendez and Arslanian sought to frustrate that probe with attempts to cover up their crimes.

Menendez, 70, shot back Tuesday, calling the new charges a “flagrant abuse of power.”

“I am innocent,” the senator said, “and will prove it no matter how many charges they continue to pile on.”

In one instance detailed in Tuesday’s court filing, Arslanian met with one of the businessmen — Jose Uribe, a former insurance broker from Union City — shortly after the FBI raids. She pressed him on what he would tell investigators if they came asking about a $60,000 Mercedes convertible he had helped her buy in 2019, according to the indictment.

At the time, Uribe said he would tell agents that he gave Arslanian money for a down payment and that subsequent payments on the car were a personal loan, the charging document says.

» READ MORE: Who is Bob Menendez’s wife, Nadine? Who else was charged in the indictment?

But Uribe pleaded guilty last week, admitting that story was a lie. Instead, he told a federal judge, the car he helped Arslanian buy was intended as a bribe to her husband, who Uribe hoped would assist him in quashing an unrelated criminal investigation targeting two of his associates and employees.

Still, after learning that they were the targets of a bribery investigation in late 2022 and that Uribe’s gift played a central role, Menendez and Arslanian attempted to pay back $21,000 the businessman had put toward purchasing the Mercedes-Benz, prosecutors say.

The memo line on the check Arslanian sent Uribe read: “personal loan.” But it didn’t cover the full amount Uribe had paid on her behalf.

Prosecutors accused the couple of similarly attempting to pass off bribe payments from another New Jersey businessman — Wael Hana, the Egyptian founder of a New Jersey-based halal meat certification company — as a loan that they later repaid.

» READ MORE: From gold bars to a pricey car: All the bribes Sen. Bob Menendez has been accused of accepting over the years

After learning that FBI agents were questioning actions Menendez took that benefited Hana’s business — including a letter he wrote in 2019 urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to drop its resistance to a monopoly Egypt had granted the firm to become the sole U.S.-based certifier of halal meat exports to the North African country — Menendez and Arslanian cut him a check for $23,000.

That sum, investigators said, exactly matched the amount Hana gave Arslanian earlier that year to help keep a home she owned in Englewood Cliffs out of foreclosure during the period he was seeking favors from Menendez.

The new indictment also accuses the couple of misleading their former attorneys on the true nature of the gifts from Uribe and Hana in hopes of persuading authorities to drop their bribery probe.

The lawyers met twice with prosecutors in June and September and maintained that Menendez only learned of the gifts to his wife in 2022 and that he understood them to have been loans that would eventually be repaid, the new indictment says.

Their effort to deter the government from lodging a case against the senator and his wife ultimately failed.

Menendez, Arslanian, Hana, Uribe, and a third businessman — New Jersey real estate developer Fred Daibes — were all charged in September with bribery and related crimes.

Responding to the new charges Tuesday, Menendez insisted the government “has long known that I learned of and helped repay loans — not bribes — that had been provided to my wife.”

He vowed to disprove the government’s allegations at trial — as well as claims, lodged in previous indictments, that actions he took at the request of patrons like Hana benefited the governments of Egypt and Qatar.

A three-term incumbent, Menendez has resisted calls for his resignation from even some of his closest allies, though he was forced to step down from his role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time of his 2023 arrest.

This article contains information from the Associated Press.