Alyssa Farah Griffin dismissed Ana Navarro’s defense of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) in his upcoming criminal corruption case by noting “he knew what he was doing.”
The New Jersey lawmaker, along with his wife Nadine Menendez, was criminally indicted on corruption charges relating to the acceptance of cash, gold bars, and luxury cars in exchange for political favors.
During Friday’s episode of The View, the panel discussed Menendez’s possible new legal strategy to blame his current wife Nadine for the alleged wrongdoing.
Navarro, who worked with Menendez to pass legislation on Capitol Hill, noted that she was biased towards the lawmaker arguing that “this is not the Bob” she knows before Griffin shut down her defense.
Griffin previously served as a communications director for former President Donald Trump before becoming a critic of the Republican leader. Navarro worked as a political strategist on Capitol Hill and supported Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign in the 2016 GOP primary.
NAVARRO: And every time we talk about this, I want to I always want to start by saying I think I’m biased. I try to be objective, but I’ve known Bob Menendez for almost 30 years. I’ve worked with him on countless issues Cuba, Nicaragua, immigration, Central American free trade. This Menendez that I read about here just does not jive, does not square away with the man I’ve known for for all this time.
It’s hard for me. I don’t understand all of these facts. I’ve you know, I went to him with 100 issues with very rich clients. He never, ever did anything like this. And I will say this, and I don’t excuse him. I don’t justify him because Bob was one of the smartest people in Congress. It’s a low bar, but he really is one of the smartest people that I know that I work with in Congress. I think there needs to be more regulation of family members lobbying because it’s not just Bob Menendez, his wife. It’s, you know, siblings and spouses. It’s all over this thing. And they do have an advantage that other people don’t have.
And a lot of lobbying firms have them on the firm and they don’t even work. They don’t even show up. They just have the names. The, the people of new Jersey are going to have a say on this. Bob has not said if you run on him again, he’s not running as a Democrat. He hasn’t said if he’s running as an independent. And I’ll say this last thing, a lot of his friends, including me, when we saw this case, this is not the Bob we know, who is this woman and how this happened. I mean, she suddenly showed up back in the middle of Covid, saying that she didn’t know he was a senator…
GRIFFIN: But as a former very senior government official, we are literally sat down and briefed and shifts on the fact that we have information that’s a value to America’s allies and our adversaries, and you will be targeted. You will be given opportunities because people can profit and gain all this information we have. If Justin had come up to me and been like, listen, I met some interesting Qataris and they could take us on a cold trip, I would have had the judgment to sniff that out in two seconds.
Bob Menendez is incredibly smart. He knows what he was doing and he knows it was wrong. And the charges are serious. 18 criminal counts. Yeah, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, justice violating of acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion and so on. He knew what he was doing. I don’t think he should still be in the Senate. He shouldn’t still be getting classified briefings that he shouldn’t be on the Senate Foreign Relations.
Watch the clip above via ABC’s The View.
