They’re playing by mob rules.
The Kennedy clan’s ramped-up reaction to Kerry Kennedy’s alleged drugged-driving smashup has upstate authorities likening the brood to a bunch of wiseguys, sources said yesterday.
“The family is so aggressive, they act like some organized-crime family,” said a law-enforcement source familiar with the case.
“They come right out playing hardball with bare knuckles — they don’t even know the facts.”
TRUCKER IN KENNEDY CRASH CHARGED
Kennedy, 52, the ex-wife of Gov. Cuomo and daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was charged with driving while ability impaired by drugs after cops said they found her unable to walk, talk or see straight minutes after a harrowing drive on Interstate 684 last Friday.
Kennedy, who allegedly weaved in and out of traffic and cut off several drivers before slamming her Lexus into a tractor-trailer and fleeing the scene, initially told cops she may have taken the potent sleeping drug Ambien.
But just minutes after police announced her arrest, Kennedy’s camp insisted that blood and urine tests conducted by private doctors in the hours after the 8 a.m. crash showed no drugs or alcohol in her system.
“Ninety minutes after the State Police issued a press release, [Kennedy spokesman] Ken Sunshine puts out a release that says she’s clean. Right now, they’re obfuscating. I don’t believe any of it,” said the law-enforcement source.
“Could she really have had some kind of seizure [as she now claims]? Who knows? They painted themselves into a corner. She admitted taking Ambien, now they say no. Either it’s there or it’s not, either it’s in the blood or it isn’t — period.
“It’s absolutely black and white depending on the drug tests. If the tests show something above therapeutic levels, you have a slam-dunk case.”
Kennedy family sources said they are confident the official toxicology results will mimic the private results.
On Tuesday, Kennedy pleaded not guilty to the charges.
She apologized to truck driver Rocco Scuiletti and the other drivers she endangered and said her doctors believe she had a seizure, which may have been connected to an old head injury.
She didn’t elaborate on the old injury, but a source said it could have occurred in college, when Kennedy bungee-jumped out of a window at Brown University and hit the pavement.
He said Kennedy’s doctors are still conducting neurological and other tests.
Meanwhile, Kennedy yesterday said she’s open to apologizing to trucker Scuiletti in person.
Scuiletti, who was suspended by his employer after he didn’t report that Kennedy plowed into him, called her apology “very heartwarming,” and suggested they meet for “coffee and pie.”