Baku, December 5, AZERTAC

New details surfaced about former chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, pro-Armenian Bob Menendez who is accused of accepting bribes, and his spouse of Armenian descent Nadine Arslanian.

The New-York Times published an article about Nadine Arslanian who hit and killed a pedestrian in a 2018 car crash.

The articled titled “Inside the Menendez Indictment: A Mercedes and a Secretive Fatal Crash” reads: In December 2018, a fatal car crash in Bogota, New Jersey, resulted in no charges for the soon-to-be wife of Senator Robert Menendez. The incident occurred when the driver, Nadine Arslanian, was driving in a black Mercedes-Benz sedan when she struck Richard Koop, 49, almost instantly. After brief questioning, the police concluded that Ms. Menendez, who was alone in the vehicle, was "not at fault."

What happened that night in the borough of Bogota outside New York City was not reported for years, leaving witnesses and Mr. 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 federal indictment unveiled last month against Ms. Menendez, her powerful husband, and three businessmen raises additional questions about the inquiry into the collision itself. Prosecutors claim 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 family really has had serious concerns over what we felt was a very sparse, one-sided investigation,” Ms. Koop-Angelicola said in an interview. The family of Mr. Koop-Angelicola, who had serious concerns over the sparse, one-sided investigation, felt that the whole thing was very silently swept under the rug.

Ms. Menendez and her husband 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.

The autopsy report later showed that Mr. Koop had alcohol and marijuana in his system. His family said it had never understood why Ms. Menendez was not tested for substances, but veteran criminal defense lawyers said it was not unusual for the police not to test Ms. Menendez for alcohol or other substances the night of the crash.

In addition to the corruption investigation into Mr. Menendez, the F.B.I. has been conducting a parallel counterintelligence inquiry, according to four people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an active investigation. The review, first reported by NBC News, is seeking to determine whether Egypt’s intelligence service sought to obtain information from Mr. Menendez through Mr. Hana’s friend Nadine Menendez, who married Mr. Menendez in 2020.”

Senator Bob Menendez has been accused of bribery twice since taking office in 2006. Although he was able to escape the earlier accusations, the present accusations are supported by some very significant evidence. On September 23, Bob Menendez temporarily stepped down as head of the chamber's foreign relations committee as he battles bribery charges.