Sen. Bob Menendez nicknamed co-defendant wife Nadine ‘Bubbles’ due to cleavage: report

She’s not just his wife, she’s his breast friend.

Indicted Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) dubbed his spouse and fellow federal criminal defendant Nadine “Bubbles” in a nod to her ample décolletage, a friend of the disgraced lawmaker told New York magazine.

Nadine, who became the second Mrs. Menendez at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, is at the center of the pair’s indictment for an alleged conspiracy to work as a foreign agent for Egypt in addition to other corruption charges.

The pair claimed to have met in late 2018 at an IHOP restaurant in Bob Menendez’s political stomping ground of Union City, where they were purportedly introduced by the eatery’s owner.

“He was very intelligent and had a great sense of humor, and he was very, very hot,” Nadine told the New York Times in a 2021 puff piece about their marriage.

But many confidants and observers of the couple question that story and believe the two had actually known each other for many years before.

“She always knew Bob. I think she met him at an event in 2008 in Saddle River or Franklin Lakes,” an ex-boyfriend of the former Nadine Arslanian told New York.

The Garden State Democrat had previously been married to Jane Jacobsen, but divorced in 2005 after a 29-year marriage that produced two children, MSNBC host Alicia Menendez and current Rep. Rob Menendez (D-NJ).

Long known as something of a ladies’ man, Menendez returned to the dating scene.

But by 2018, he had split with his latest girlfriend, reportedly due to tension over the intense media scrutiny brought by his 2015 corruption indictment. Those charges were dropped three years later after a jury couldn’t reach a verdict.

Like her future husband, Nadine had gotten divorced in 2005. Around 2011, she began dating Hackensack lawyer Douglas Anton, who represented R. Kelly during his sex-trafficking trial.

Anton told The Post in September that Nadine used to call Menendez “every year on his birthday [Jan. 1]. Sometimes he invited her for lunch if he was doing an event in New Jersey and she would go with one of her girlfriends.”

According to Anton, Menendez asked Nadine during her 2018 birthday phone call if she was still dating “that Doug lawyer,” and told her that he had been in love with her since 2008. She saw both men “on and off” for the next several months, Anton added.

That May, Anton told The Post, Menendez dispatched two Capitol Police officers to Anton’s office in Hackensack, with a friend of the lawyer saying the senator “wanted to bully Doug out of the picture.”

As Nadine and Menendez began getting serious, she introduced him to some her buddies — including halal-meat businessman Wael “Will” Hana, one of three cronies at the center of the bribery indictment.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she mentioned that she knew Menendez and these guys told her if you can figuratively get in bed with him — and she did literally do that — then they set out to influence him,” a former FBI agent speculated to New York.

“And she understood what they wanted and set out to see if she could cultivate him. And it probably went better than they hoped.”

“I think she knew exactly what she was doing. She wanted to live the high life,” added one of Nadine’s ex-boyfriends.

That high life reportedly included a party persona in which Nadine wasn’t shy about flaunting her assets.

“Whenever she went out, you could see her chest. It was always three buttons down,” one of her exes told the magazine. “She likes to be seen.”

“Hers are not the type of boobs that should be hanging without a bra; they hang to her knees. And no bra!” added former “Real Housewives of New Jersey” star Kim DePaola, with whom Nadine hobnobbed before marrying Menendez. “We would be like, ‘What?’ We are far from prudes … and we would look at each other and just [say], ‘Wow.’”

As chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez championed Nadine’s pet political causes, including successfully wrangling a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide.

Nadine was born in Beirut, but is of Armenian ancestry and has claimed that 13 “immediate members” of her family were killed at the hands of Turkish forces in the early 20th century.

According to federal prosecutors, Menendez also used his chairmanship to secretly lobby for military aid to Egypt at the request of Cairo government agents he met through Hana and Nadine. He also allegedly secured Hana a monopoly on certifying meat exports to Egypt as halal — and warned Department of Agriculture officials to back off when they questioned the concession.

Since his indictment, Menendez has stepped down from his committee chairmanship and been replaced by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). He has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to all charges.

“The government is engaged in primitive hunting, by which the predator chases its prey until it’s exhausted and then kills it,” Menendez said in a statement.

A plethora of fellow Democrats, led by Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, have demanded Menendez step aside, but he has refused to do so and insisted on running for re-election next year.

Should he stick with that promise, Menendez will face stiff competition from progressive Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ). New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy is also reportedly leaning toward tossing her hat into the ring, with Menendez telling Politico Tuesday that “she’ll have to deal with a lot of baggage” if she does get in.

A staggering 72% of New Jersey voters have an unfavorable view of Menendez, compared to 8% who have a favorable view, according to a Stockton University poll released last week..

More than three-quarters (79%) of Garden Staters were either very or somewhat familiar with the charges against the senator and 71% want him to resign from office, including 78% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans, per the poll.

The poll was taken Oct. 9-18 and surveyed 630 New Jersey adults with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.9 percentage points.

Menendez’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.