Is there a Democrat civil war brewing over the presidency?

One is tempted to think so, given how many damaging stories are suddenly showing up in the news just after it dropped that Joe Biden was preparing to announce his reelection bid.

While the classified documents story is still heating up, CNN suddenly discovered that the Biden family is filled with corrupt influence peddlers.

Who knew? There were no indications. Not a hint of anything like that. Joe gave us his “word as a Biden” that everything was on the up and up, and the media up until now scoffed at the idea that anything could be wrong. Indeed, Chuck Todd just insulted Senator Ron Johnson for bringing up the subject.

For years, as Joe Biden has sought to assure the American public he deserves their trust, he’s relied upon a go-to phrase meant to underscore his credibility: “I give you my word as a Biden.”

But that’s not the only way the Biden family name has been used. The president’s brothers have invoked it in their private business pursuits over the years to suggest access to power and influence, according to a CNN review of court documents, emails and video recordings as well as interviews with former business acquaintances.

A year after Biden was elected, for example, his youngest brother, Frank, boasted in a speech to medical professionals gathered in Boston of the “bully pulpit” he was afforded due to “my brother Joey,” and vowed to help attendees “get federal dollars.” Just three months ago, Frank Biden was an invited keynote speaker at a medical conference in Venice, Italy, where he gave advice to a group lobbying the federal government – a trip he acknowledged he did not pay for but declined to say who did.

Who wants to bet that the CNN “review of court documents, emails, and video recordings” was really a review of an opposition research file handed over to them by an interested party? If you do, I’m in!

That’s how it generally works. There are investigative reporters in the world who do indeed investigate, but 98% of the time all you are seeing is what some oppo research guy put together, predigested, and fed to a reporter. I would bet $100 that is what happened here. And I would bet more than that it was a Democrat who provided it. Somebody who wants ol’ Joe to fade off into the sunset.

Biden’s son, Hunter, meanwhile, has bluntly acknowledged in a memoir that his last name was a “coveted credential” helping him land a lucrative and controversial gig as a board member for a Ukrainian energy company when Joe Biden was vice president. That company, Burisma, “considered my last name gold,” Hunter Biden wrote.

For years we have been assured that Hunter Biden was simply a troubled child struggling with his own demons. We should leave the poor young man alone to deal with his addictions…. But now, all of a sudden, maybe he is part of a larger Biden influence peddling scheme, maybe. I hear there may be some emails that are unflattering to the Bidens hidden away somewhere!

At least one email from the laptop – cited in a November report released by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee – shows Hunter Biden acknowledging that his family lineage was one of his major selling points. As he discussed a Chinese business deal in September 2011, Hunter Biden told a colleague that a potential business partner’s apparent fondness for him “has nothing to do with me and everything to do with my last name.”

Wait until they get around to reading the “10% for the big guy” email! If they ever do. Right now they are in the “nice family you have there, shame if something were to happen to it” phase of bargaining for Joe’s departure, if that is what is happening here. And it sure looks like that may be the case. Not that the Democrats share with me their strategy. But something tells me that Kamala and Gavin Newsom have their eye on the comfy chair.

Still, to some experts in government ethics, the family has been guilty of at least one thing: Poor judgment. While it may be legal for public officials’ family members to invoke their names in private business deals, it “undermines ideas of equality, equal access and the idea that government power is supposed to be used for the public good,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in government ethics.

Clark said Joe Biden “put his head in the sand” regarding his son’s business pursuits, especially during his vice presidency. She argued that he should have privately told his family members not to leverage his name and publicly issued statements discouraging such behavior.

“It’s not good enough to say, ‘I had no knowledge of this,’” she said.

Too bad nobody had access to any of this information until January 2023! I am certain reporters would have gotten right on the story, but it was buried so deeply, hidden so well, so obscure that nobody could possibly have suspected until CNN spent months combing through emails and talking to ethicists to report this shocking news. This is enterprise reporting at its best!

Who would have suspected!?

In October, as heart doctors from around the world gathered at a former monastery on a tiny island in Venice, Italy, a keynote speaker from the United States delivered a lecture on “the future of global health care.”

The speaker was not a doctor. Nor did he have an extensive background in health care, global or otherwise. But Francis W. “Frank” Biden did have something else: A brother in the White House.

In his speech, Frank Biden talked about his family and his brother’s cancer initiative, according to attendees. Following his remarks, the leader of a trade group who attended the event promptly posted a video from Venice informing members he represents that he’d spoken with Frank Biden about their efforts to lobby the federal government on Medicare reimbursement rules. The president’s brother, he told his members, had agreed to help.

“He and his team were quite enthusiastic about this,” Dr. Andrew Krahn said in the video. “They will do what they can to try to ensure that our message is heard by the right people.”

Frank Biden is just as much an expert on the future of global health care as Hunter was on Ukrainian natural gas, so why wouldn’t this group of doctors swilling wine in Venice listen in rapt attention as Frank riffed about health care and heart rhythms? It must have been fascinating! Everybody wants to hear Frank talk. He is so charming!

Frank Biden, who is not a registered federal lobbyist, told CNN he has not communicated with the government on behalf of the Heart Rhythm Society and refuted any notion that he has somehow leveraged his brother’s office for personal gain.

He initially told CNN that his trip to Italy, including his flight and one or two nights in a hotel, was paid for by the CEO of BioSig Technologies, a health technology company that co-sponsored the conference.

The Venice conference wasn’t the first time Frank Biden spoke at an event associated with BioSig. In the summer of 2021, he gave a speech to health professionals at a dinner in Boston hosted by the company.

At that event, Frank Biden boasted of “the bully pulpit that I have as a result of the privilege of being associated with my brother Joey,” and vowed to “do everything in my power to support you to get the job done, to get federal dollars to your research,” a video of his speech shows.

Health professionals are famously fascinated by the blatherings of Bidens. I bet they could spend hours in rapt attention as they prattle on about the future of health care. It has nothing to do with “being associated with my brother Joey.” Total coincidence.

As is the fact that Biden works at a law firm as a “non-attorney advisor.” If you think about it, if Frank is 1/10th as smart and honest as his brother Joey every law firm would be dying for his advice.

CNN: Joe Biden did, in fact, meet with his son's corrupt business partners on multiple occasions when he was VP. pic.twitter.com/an9mHBvBDX

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 18, 2023

There’s tons more of this in the story, and if you want to fight down the urge to throw up in your mouth you can finish it yourself. You get the idea: the Bidens are influence peddling pond scum, although nowhere near as bad as Trump, of course. Trump is still bad and orange, but there just might be something a bit shady about Joe’s family. Ethicists say so, now that Biden might run for reelection.

I was stupid and blind enough to not immediately jump to the conclusion that the documents scandal was a Democrat plant, but now I am pretty sure it is. The NBC crowd is still on Team Joe, but CNN may have chosen the California crowd looking for a Harris or Newsom candidacy.

I am just speculating, of course, but somebody put together this info for CNN, because they are way too lazy and partisan to do it themselves. My experience is that stories like this are pitched, not organic. I have seen the preparations for and the actual pitches take place in the past. I can’t prove that happened here, of course, but a confluence of damaging stories doesn’t just happen after years of the MSM actively hiding the ball for the Bidens.

So who’s behind it? Well Kamala is famously unhappy, with grumbling about being disrespected having made it into the media in the past, and Gavin Newsom has so obviously been pitching himself as an alternative to Biden. He has even spent money advertising in other states.

My money is on one of them, but maybe there is a dark horse somewhere. And of course it would be through some intermediary, never the front man. It could just be a bunch of donors looking for somebody with a pulse and a brain.

Place your bets, if you are a betting man. This will be a fun game to watch.