Should officeholders like Senator Bob Menendez who have been charged with unlawfully acting as a foreign agent be prevented from accessing classified national security information? Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla thinks so – and he wants Menendez’s son, Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), to co-sponsor a bill that would do just that.
Bhalla, who is running against the younger Menendez in this June’s Democratic primary for New Jersey’s 8th congressional district, said today that if elected to Congress he’ll co-sponsor the GUARD Act, a bill authored by Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) that prohibits individuals charged with certain crimes from receiving classified information.
“It is essential to our national security that we safeguard classified information,” Bhalla said. “It is the only way to retain the trust of other nations, so they continue to share valuable intelligence secrets, as well as to protect sources and methods. Elected officials, candidates and other federal office holders who are facing charges for serious crimes that jeopardize our national security should lose their access to top secret information.”
Menendez has an imperative, Bhalla said, to use his position as a member of Congress to push for the bill, even though it would mean limiting the ability of his father (whose case will go to trial next month) to act as a full-fledged senator.
“I call on Rob Menendez Jr to publicly back the GUARD Act and sign on as a co-sponsor,” Bhalla said. “There is no excuse for being missing in action on this important national security measure.”
(To date, the bill has only picked up one co-sponsor, Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin, and is unlikely to go anywhere in this congressional session.)
In response to Bhalla’s declaration, Menendez said that he would rather focus on the “tangible results” he has achieved for the 8th congressional district; his statement did not directly address Sherrill’s bill.
“While I have built a record of getting things done here and in Congress, Ravi resorts to performative antics because he needs to distract voters from his extensive history of ethical issues – a suspended law license, gaming pay-to-play laws, and more,” Menendez said. “Ravi knows that he can’t talk about his unethical record, so he simply attacks me. I continue to focus our campaign on an unwavering commitment to our shared values with the people across this district and the tangible results we have delivered for them.”
While the younger Menendez has been in no way implicated in the charges against his father, the explosive indictment has become Bhalla’s chief line of attack against the first-term congressman. 8th district voters should break from the Menendez family, Bhalla has argued, and chart a new course free from their legal cloud.
And polling shows that his message stands a chance of working. Although Menendez has the support of most local politicians in his Hudson County-based district, that support means less than it usually does thanks to the removal of the county organizational line, and Bhalla is neck-and-neck with Menendez in fundraising.