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Embattled Sen. Bob Menendez is facing a new perfect storm of legal and political troubles — splitting from the super-lawyer defending him against charges of bribery, facing speculation that one of his co-accused’s closest associates could be ratting him out to federal prosecutors, and seeing his polls plummet.

The New Jersey Democrat quietly split from his longtime powerhouse lawyer Abbe Lowell — who secured his acquittal from previous bribery charges — and instead signed up with Washington-based attorney Robert Luskin.

Ironically for an indictee fighting charges he took bribes in gold bars, Luskin was himself once paid in gold bars by another client — earning the nickname “Gold Bar Bob,” the same as the senator’s.

Menendez, 69, who has been in the political arena for half a century and a member of the US Senate since 2006, is now facing record low poll numbers with 70 percent of Garden State voters saying he should resign.

The Democrat’s latest troubles began in June 2022, when federal agents raided his Englewood Cliffs, NJ home and found gold bars, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash stuffed into the pockets of Menendez’s jackets.

Menendez, his second wife Nadine Arslanian, and three associates — one of them a developer called Fred Daibes — were indicted in October on charges of bribery and conspiring to act as foreign agents for Egypt. All five deny all charges.

Now The Post can disclose that one of Daibes’ former business partners, who was also a Menendez donor, has been co-operating with Manhattan prosecutors since Feb. 2022, four months before the raid.

Gazmend Lita, an Albanian-American quietly cut a plea deal that month, agreeing to co-operate with the prosecutors on undisclosed investigations while pleading guilty to one count of being part of an illegal gambling ring, according to court documents.

In return he got 3 years probation and agreed to forfeit more than $111,000 for his crimes, according to federal court records — compared to the 5-year sentence he could have faced.

But Lita — who once posed with Pres. Joe Biden long before his time in the White House — is closely entwined with Daibes, who in turn is accused of bribing Menendez.

The 53-year-old Albanian-American co-owned Le Jardin restaurant in Edgewater with Daibes, while his Lita Bros. Construction has offices in the same Edgewater corporate building that houses Daibes’s own construction firm.

But Lita — who once posed with Pres. Joe Biden long before his time in the White House — is closely entwined with Daibes, who in turn is accused of bribing Menendez.

He also lives in an apartment at the luxury river-front residential tower, The Alexander, developed by Daibes.

And Lita is also a member of the board of the Indian branch of IS EG Halal, a halal certification company at the center of the Menendez indictment.

The New Jersey-based firm is run by Egyptian-American Wael Hana, who is also indicted in the Menendez bribery case. He too denies all charges.

Prosecutors allege that Hana was introduced by Arslanian to Menendez in 2020, before the couple married.

Wael’s company, which is also run out of Daibes’ Edgewater office building, was operated with financial backing from Daibes, according to court records.

Lita has his own ties to Menendez. He and his family members have $11,000 donated to Menendez’s campaigns for Senate.

And Lita lobbied the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2019 — when Menendez was the ranking Democratic member — on behalf of an Albanian prosecutor who had been banned from entering the US, according to Open Secrets.