Well, that didn’t take long. Bob Menendez is a lot of things, father, husband, disgraced senator and most importantly a survivor. If you were hiking with Bob Menendez and came upon a bear, Bob is the type of guy who would quickly realize he doesn’t need to outrun the bear, he just has to outrun you. His political career is clearly over, but Gold Bar Bob still has some maneuvering to do if he wants to avoid the orange jumpsuit, that’s where the survival instincts kick in.
According to reports published earlier this week, Menendez and his legal team may have settled on a defense strategy, namely throwing his wife under the bus. Let’s call this the “Shaggy Defense,” in honor of Jamaican-American reggae legend Shaggy and his 2000 international hit, “It Wasn’t Me”.
If the insider reports are true, Menendez plans to blame it all on his wife of several years, Nadine. She solicited bribes from Egyptian business interests, including a 2019 Mercedes. She stuffed sweaty envelopes of cash in the couch cushions and loaded his suit pockets with gold bars all while Bob was busy leading the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and rescuing kittens from trees. For better or worse, indeed.
The “Shaggy Defense” is a bold gambit, for both the senator’s legal and private life. There’s already enough public and circumstantial evidence that his fellow senators feel comfortable telling him to resign, but consider the man’s home life. Maintaining a healthy marriage is tough work. It involves trust, compromise and open channels of communication, and I can’t imagine trying to pin a few dozen federal corruption charges on your spouse would help any of those things.
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