Nadine Menendez

Ms. Menendez, who is represented by a Washington-based lawyer, now finds herself at the center of an investigation that carries the risk of steep criminal penalties and could alter the political playing field in New Jersey and in Washington as her husband prepares to run for a fourth term next year.Ms. Menendez, 56, has lived a mainly private life. She holds a master’s degree in French language and civilization from New York University, but did not work outside the home while raising her two children in Bergen County, N.J. She struggled financially after a 2005 divorce and even faced foreclosure. But by 2020, the year she and Mr. Menendez were married, she had formed an international consulting company, and her assets included bars of gold bullion then valued at as much as $250,000. The current investigation appears to focus at least in part on the couple’s connection to a 40-year-old New Jersey businessman, Wael Hana, who has known Ms. Menendez since before she started dating the senator. She was born in Lebanon to Armenian parents, who fled during the Lebanese civil war. They emigrated to the United States when she was a child, eventually settling in New York.