I don't know if it's due to shit editing or the Time's SEO desire to keep reader on the page or both but the article is horribly written.
Menendez is like a dirty pol in a tv series like The Sopranos.
-
It seems to me the crash could have been something like vehicular homicide. The crash was bad - the poor guy got mangled. But Menendez got all charges dropped.
-
She needed a new car.
-
Menendez again corruptly used his influence in an entirely different situation. The quid pro quo was he got a businessman to finance a new car for his now carless girlfriend.
Prosecutors said in those charging papers that Ms. Menendez needed a car so badly after a December 2018 “accident” that the senator, a Democrat, was willing to try to suppress an unrelated criminal prosecution for a New Jersey businessman in exchange for a $60,000 Mercedes convertible. The fatal collision with Mr. Koop on Dec. 12 matches prosecutors’ terse description of the December 2018 crash.
[...]
The police reports indicate she was never tested for drugs or alcohol, and was allowed to leave the scene. [She was never arrested.]
[...]
According to the indictment, Mr. Menendez agreed to call a senior prosecutor at the New Jersey attorney general’s office in late January to try and pressure him to go easy on an associate of Mr. Uribe. Mr. Uribe, in return, agreed to finance a car, prosecutors said. His lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment.
[...]
The crash that ensued just after 7:30 p.m. killed the man, Richard Koop, 49, almost instantly. His body was thrown to the curb just steps from his home and badly mangled, according to the Bergen County medical examiner.
[...]
Danielle DeBouter, Mr. Koop’s ex-wife, was called to identify his body hours later. She said he was almost unrecognizable. She only learned of the connection between Ms. Menendez and the senator later, through a family lawyer, Sheri A. Breen. “We always wondered what actually happened that horrible night. So much was left unanswered,” Ms. DeBouter said. “I don’t know if we will ever know the truth.”
[...]
“It is determined that at this time Ms. Arslanian was not at fault for the motor vehicle crash and that Mr. Koop was jaywalking,” the Bogota sergeant wrote in his report the next day.
[...]
“All is GREAT! I’m so excited to get a car next week. !!” Ms. Menendez texted Mr. Hana a few days after the senator placed the call.
In April, four months after Mr. Koop’s 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 “never forget this” and messaged Mr. Menendez to celebrate, too.
“Congratulations mon amour de la vie,” Ms. Menendez wrote to Mr. Menendez, according to the indictment. “We are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes.”
[...]
Surveillance video shows that Ms. Menendez stayed in her car after striking Mr. Koop, eventually moving the vehicle a few car lengths in front of where his body came to rest. She does not appear to have approached him before authorities arrived and found no pulse.
In that time, Ms. Menendez appears to have clearly contacted someone. Within roughly 30 minutes of the collision, a man who identified himself to the police as a retired officer from nearby Hackensack arrived to help her.
[...]
A police report later indicated that the authorities issued a subpoena for Ms. Menendez’s phone records — presumably to see if she had been calling or texting at the time of the accident — but it does not indicate what the search yielded, or if it was even completed.