New Jersey cop rushed to help Bob Menendez’s wife after Mercedes crash despite being retired and convinced patrolman on duty to let her go without a sobriety test or having to hand over her phone

A top New Jersey cop rushed to Bob Menendez’s wife’s side after she killed a man with her Mercedes in a crash in 2018, questioning police officers on the scene until she was allowed to walk away without a field sobriety test or had to hand in her phone.

Menendez’s wife Nadine Arslanian fatally beat 49-year-old Richard Koop on December 12, 2018 in Bogota, New Jersey. She was dating the Democratic senator from New Jersey at the time, but they were not yet married. They are now both accused of bribery and corruption.

After the 2019 crash, Bogota police rushed to the crash site to question Arslanian.

She told them that Hoop was jaywalking and had placed herself in the path of her car.

Dashcam video from the crash scene shows Arslanian wearing a dress and fur coat as she speaks to a police officer. Mordaga was never shown on camera, but his voice was recorded in the background

Nadine Arslanian Menendez is charged along with her husband, Senator Bob Menedez, in the alleged bribery scheme

Also there was Michael Mordaga, the former director of the Hackensack Police Department and a former chief of detectives at the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, according to The New York Post.

Mordaga is the man who can be heard asking the police officers if they took a statement from Arslanian.

‘That’s my friend’s wife, who is friends with her.

He said can you do me a favor and take her there because her friend just got in a car accident,” he said, explaining why he had shown up, before asking, “Are you guys getting an explanation that you’re going?” to the prosecutor’s office?’

Police let Arslanian walk away without a field sobriety test or handing over her phone records.

She was never charged and later received a new Mercedes convertible to replace the vehicle damaged in the crash.

According to federal charging documents, about a month after the crash, Arslanian sent a text message to Wael Hana, an Egyptian-American businessman who was also indicted on bribery charges, complaining about not having a car.

The crash killed 49-year-old Richard Koop (above) in Bogota, New Jersey on December 12, 2018

Prosecutors say Hana and another defendant in the case, Jose Uribe, eventually gave Arslanian $15,000 in cash as a down payment for a new Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible worth $60,000, as well as making the monthly financing payments.

The car was registered in March 2019. After picking up the car, Arslanian thanked Uribe in a text message that read, “I will never forget this,” according to the federal indictment.

Prosecutors allege that in exchange for the Mercedes, Menendez attempted to interfere with a criminal investigation in New Jersey at the behest of Hana and Uribe.

Menendez and his wife have pleaded not guilty to the federal charges, which stem from bribery and extortion allegations involving the Egyptian government.

Shortly after the crash, Wael Hana, an Egyptian-American businessman also charged with bribery, arranged to buy this Mercedes for Arslanian, prosecutors say

So far, Menendez has defied calls from his own Democratic Party colleagues to leave office, although he “temporarily” resigned as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after the indictment was made public last month.

Prosecutors say the senator provided sensitive information to the Egyptian government to help an Egyptian-American businessman protect his monopoly.

According to the indictment, between 2018 and 2022, Menendez accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from Hana, Uribe and Fred Daibes in exchange for using “his power and influence to protect and enrich those businessmen and for the benefit of the government of Egypt.”