{"id":43421,"date":"2023-10-04T22:20:01","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T22:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/04\/the-bob-menendez-corruption-case-takes-a-wildly-f-ked-up-turn\/"},"modified":"2023-10-04T22:20:01","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T22:20:01","slug":"the-bob-menendez-corruption-case-takes-a-wildly-f-ked-up-turn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/04\/the-bob-menendez-corruption-case-takes-a-wildly-f-ked-up-turn\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bob Menendez Corruption Case Takes a Wildly F&#8211;ked-Up Turn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"has-dropcap\">The federal corruption case against Senator <strong>Bob Menendez, Nadine Arslanian Menendez,<\/strong> and a trio of New Jersey businessmen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2023\/09\/bob-menendez-indictment-gold-bars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">began<\/a> with allegations of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gold bars and cash \u201cstuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe.\u201d Now, it\u2019s somehow taken an even darker turn, involving a fatal car crash.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>New Jersey\u2019s <em>The Record<\/em> newspaper and <em>The New York Times<\/em> <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.northjersey.com\/story\/news\/new-jersey\/2023\/10\/04\/bob-menendez-wife-car-accident-bogota-nj-police-indictment\/71051427007\/\" class=\"external-link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.northjersey.com\/story\/news\/new-jersey\/2023\/10\/04\/bob-menendez-wife-car-accident-bogota-nj-police-indictment\/71051427007\/&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.northjersey.com\/story\/news\/new-jersey\/2023\/10\/04\/bob-menendez-wife-car-accident-bogota-nj-police-indictment\/71051427007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">both<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/10\/04\/nyregion\/nadine-menendez-mercedes-death.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reported<\/a> on Wednesday that Nadine Menendez, the wife and codefendant of the New Jersey senator, struck and killed a man while driving through the town of Bogota, NJ, on December 12, 2018. According to <em>The Record,<\/em> police records do not show that Nadine Menendez, who was dating the senator at the time, was tested for drugs or alcohol or taken into custody. According to dashcam video obtained the <em>Times, s<\/em>he was joined at one point by a retired police officer who told the cops, \u201cI don\u2019t even know her. That\u2019s my buddy\u2019s wife who\u2019s friends with her. He said could you do me a favor and take her up there, because her friend just got in a car accident.\u201d A man whose parked car Menendez hit after striking the victim told the <em>Times<\/em> that he didn\u2019t know who she was at the time, but that it seemed like she was \u201csomeone important.\u201d He added,\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t know if she was well known, or lived nearby, or the police knew her, but there appeared to be a lot of secrecy. I remember saying, \u2018That woman is just allowed to leave? She\u2019s not being arrested or anything?\u2019\u201d Menendez was reportedly released without a summons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">In a police report filed the next day, a Bogota sergeant reportedly wrote: \u201cIt is determined that at this time Ms. Arslanian was not at fault for the motor vehicle crash and that [the victim, Richard] Koop was jaywalking.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">While the crash was not mentioned in last month\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-sdny\/pr\/us-senator-robert-menendez-his-wife-and-three-new-jersey-businessmen-charged-bribery\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">indictment<\/a> against the Menendezes, it did note that in January 2019, the month after Koop was killed, Nadine texted with businessman <strong>Wael Hana<\/strong>\u2014one of the New Jersey businessmen charged in the alleged corruption scheme\u2014complaining about not having a car. According to the <em>Times,<\/em> Senator Menendez and one of the other businessman, <strong>Jose Uribe,<\/strong> \u201csoon agreed to terms to rectify that.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"BlockquoteEmbedWrapper-sc-SdiGL kMAUQf paywall blockquote-embed\">\n<div class=\"BlockquoteEmbedContent-esRbGs fyBRiV blockquote-embed__content\">\n<p>According to the indictment, Mr. Menendez agreed to call a senior prosecutor at the New Jersey attorney general\u2019s office in late January to try to pressure him to go easy on an associate of Mr. Uribe. Mr. Uribe, in return, agreed to finance a car, prosecutors said. His lawyer did not return requests for comment. \u201cAll is GREAT! I\u2019m so excited to get a car next week. !!\u201d Ms. Menendez texted Mr. Hana a few days after the senator placed the call.<\/p>\n<p>In April, four months after Mr. Koop\u2019s death, Ms. Menendez signed paperwork to purchase a new $60,000 Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible. She told Mr. Uribe by text that she would \u201cnever forget this\u201d and messaged Mr. Menendez to celebrate too. \u201cCongratulations mon amour de la vie,\u201d Ms. Menendez wrote to Mr. Menendez, according to the indictment. \u201cWe are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><strong>Rosemarie Koop-Angelicola,<\/strong> Koop\u2019s sister, told the <em>Times<\/em> that after the crash, the family heard from neither Nadine nor Bob Menendez, and not much from local authorities. \u201cThe family really has had serious concerns over what we felt was a very sparse, one-sided investigation,\u201d she said. \u201cDefinitely a lack of legal enthusiasm to take this case, definite lack of media coverage, and a lack of communication by the authorities of Bergen County. We felt that the whole thing was very silently swept under the rug.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2023\/10\/bob-menendez-nadine-menendez-car-accident\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The federal corruption case against Senator Bob Menendez, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, and a trio of New Jersey businessmen began with allegations of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gold bars and cash \u201cstuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe.\u201d Now, it\u2019s somehow taken an even darker turn, involving a fatal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[195],"class_list":{"0":"post-43421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrity","8":"tag-crime"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}