Inside the Menendez indictment: A Mercedes and a secretive fatal crash

It was a cold evening in December 2018, and Nadine Arslanian, the soon-to-be wife of Sen. Bob Menendez, was zipping through the darkened streets of suburban New Jersey in a black Mercedes-Benz sedan. She would later tell the police she did not see the man stepping out in front of her to cross a busy thoroughfare.

The collision that ensued just after 7:30 p.m. killed the 49-year-old man, Richard Koop, almost instantly. His body was thrown to the curb just steps from his home and badly mangled, according to the Bergen County medical examiner.

After brief questioning, the police concluded that Arslanian, who was alone in the vehicle, was “not at fault.” She was released without a summons.

What happened that night in the borough of Bogota outside New York City was not reported for years, leaving witnesses and Koop’s family to wonder if the fatal collision was deliberately kept quiet. But now, nearly five years later, the episode adds a startling dimension to a scandal that has shaken American politics, and raised new questions about the senator at its center.

The revelation helps fill in an important narrative gap around one of the most blatant bribes alleged in a 39-page federal indictment unveiled last month against Nadine Menendez, her powerful husband and three businesspeople.

Prosecutors said in those charging papers that Nadine 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 businessperson in exchange for a $60,000 Mercedes convertible. The fatal collision with Koop on Dec. 12 matches prosecutors’ terse description of the December 2018 accident.

Interviews, police reports, dashcam footage and other records reviewed by The New York Times also raise additional questions about the inquiry into the collision itself, which was reported earlier Wednesday by The Record of New Jersey. The questions include whether Bob Menendez, a senator long accused of using the levers of government to help his friends, may have made an attempt to intervene.

There were reasons for suspicion at the time. One witness at the scene said in an interview that officers appeared to know who Nadine Menendez was and treated her with striking deference. Police recordings captured the voice of a man who identifies himself as a retired police officer from a nearby department. He can be heard saying he came to the scene as “a favor” to a friend whose wife knew Nadine Menendez.

The police reports indicate she was never tested for drugs or alcohol, and was allowed to leave the scene, not long before Koop was declared dead at a nearby hospital. Three days later, police investigators were sent to local bars to get more information on where Koop had been in the hours before his death.

Koop’s sister, Rosemarie Koop-Angelicola, said the family never heard a word from Nadine Menendez or the senator after the crash, and little from local authorities.

“The family really has had serious concerns over what we felt was a very sparse, one-sided investigation,” Koop-Angelicola said in an interview. “Definitely 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.”

The senator, 69, and Nadine Menendez, 56, have each pleaded not guilty to the bribery-related charges, and the senator insists prosecutors are twisting facts to make legitimate congressional activity look nefarious.

In an interview, David Schertler, a lawyer for Nadine Menendez, called the car crash a “tragic accident,” but one that was unrelated to the charges she is currently facing.

“My understanding was this individual ran in front of her car, and she was not at fault,” Schertler said.

Officers from the Bogota Police Department did not return calls seeking comments about the case since Friday.

A spokesperson for the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, which would have been responsible for any decision to charge Menendez, also has not responded to a request for comment since Friday.

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The crash badly damaged Menendez’s car. “Her front windshield was shattered and had front-end damage on the passenger side, which was later determined to be from a parked car that she struck after striking Mr. Koop,” a Bogota police sergeant wrote in an incident report later.

The senator was away in Washington that night, according to Senate voting records. But after Christmas, he accompanied Nadine Menendez to a towing company’s lot to collect her belongings from the car, a company official told the Times.

He would also prove integral to replacing it, prosecutors said.

In the indictment, they mention nothing more about the collision than that it “left her without a car.” But court papers clarify what prosecutors allege came next.

They said Nadine Menendez sent multiple text messages to Hana complaining she did not have a car. But the two friends, Bob Menendez and another New Jersey businessperson who was close to Hana, Jose Uribe, soon agreed to terms to rectify that.

According to the indictment, Bob Menendez agreed to call a senior prosecutor at the New Jersey attorney general’s office in late January to try to pressure him to go easy on an associate of Uribe. Uribe, in return, agreed to finance a car, prosecutors said. His lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment.

“All is GREAT! I’m so excited to get a car next week. !!” Nadine Menendez texted Hana a few days after the senator placed the call.

In April, four months after Koop’s death, Nadine Menendez signed paperwork to purchase a new $60,000 Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible. She told Uribe by text that she would “never forget this” and messaged Bob Menendez to celebrate, too.

“Congratulations mon amour de la vie,” Nadine Menendez wrote to Bob Menendez, according to the indictment. “We are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes.”

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