NEW YORK – Billionaire businessman and former New York Mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis said his daughter’s decision to divorce her husband wasn’t influenced by a photo showing former President Bill Clinton holding her.

Andrea Catsimatidis last week suddenly filed for divorce against Christopher Nixon Cox, grandson of late former President Richard Nixon, after only three years of marriage.

Twitter was abuzz after the photo surfaced of Clinton, who has had to battle a reputation for womanizing, sidling up to Cox’s wife. But her father dismissed it as silly, noting that the social media world cropped her mother out of the picture to make it look sleazy.

‘“That is so stupid. I took the picture, it is the most innocent picture in the world. Her mother Margo was right there, too, but they cut her out of the picture. My daughter has known Bill Clinton since she was two or three years old. The Clintons are like family to us,” he said, according to the New York Post.

Cox is the son of New York Republican party head Ed Cox while John Catsimatidis, a Republican, has crossed party lines to support Democrats, including Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, a former New York US Senator.

The talk on Twitter was the coincidence of Catsimatidis filing for her divorce a day after the photo was taken with Clinton although there were no other insinuations.

Her father said he and Ed Cox were shocked to hear of the divorce action. He said, “We knew they’d had some problems, but we both found out about the filing after getting a New York Post alert. We hope they can work things out.”