This past weekend Washington Post reporter Michael Kranish worked up a detailed Sunday morning special on the Biden family business: “James Biden’s dealmaking caught on FBI tapes in unrelated bribery probe.” Subhead: “While Joe Biden campaigned in Mississippi, his brother planned to build a powerful consulting business — a deal that brought him to the periphery of a federal case.”

Kranish’s story on the Biden family business goes back to President Biden’s long service in the United States Senate. Deep are the roots. This is how Kranish’s 4,000-word story (behind the Post paywall) opens:

Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, a famed Mississippi trial attorney, was tantalizingly close to a historic deal to force tobacco companies to pay billions of dollars — but there was one last hurdle. A divided Congress had to sign off. And Scruggs had identified one of the most skeptical senators, Joe Biden, as a key to winning the vote.

Scruggs turned to Biden’s younger brother James, an old acquaintance who ran a D.C. consulting firm with his wife, Sara.

Scruggs paid the firm $100,000 in 1998 for advice on passing the bill, Scruggs said in an interview at his office here — the first time he has disclosed the amount.

“I probably wouldn’t have hired him if he wasn’t the senator’s brother,” Scruggs said.

Biden eventually backed the bill, which ultimately failed to pass Congress.

“Jim was never untoward about his influence,” Scruggs said. “He didn’t brag about it or talk about it. He didn’t have to. He was the man’s brother.”

Andrew McCarthy summarizes Kranish’s story in the NRO column “As Dems Panic over 2024, Washington Post Dredges Up Biden Brothers’ Ties to Corrupt Mississippi Lawyer and Associates” (behind the NRO paywall). Before summarizing the story he makes three points about it:

First, it’s the Post, a pillar of the Democratic administration’s Praetorian Guard — this is not just more brickbats hurled by House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) and the other Republicans investigating Biden-family influence-peddling. Second, the subject matter of the report goes back to the start of Joe Biden’s Senate career in the early Seventies (yes, the family business goes back decades), meaning the Post has intentionally dredged up unseemly details about Biden’s past that have been vaguely known for decades but that Biden must have figured were long forgotten. Third, the length of the report shows that the Post had to have spent weeks reporting its story; the paper could have dropped this report at any time, but it chose to do so now, when the president and his campaign are reeling.

In his Wall Street Journal Best of the Web column yesterday James Freeman commented in “The cost of Biden family ‘advice” (behind the Journal paywall), Freeman highlighted this paragraph of Kranish’s story:

The White House did not respond to a list of questions from The Washington Post about President Biden’s action on the tobacco legislation and, more broadly, on his relationship with his brother and whether he has ever used his public position to help him financially.

“As for the president’s brother and sister-in-law,” Freeman added, “they seem to have chosen to respond via an attorney.” He quoted from Kranish;s story:

Paul J. Fishman, a lawyer for James and Sara Biden, said in an email that neither had talked to Joe Biden about the tobacco settlement bill. “Jim Biden’s consulting work has never involved speaking with or providing access to his brother for this or any other client,” Fishman said.

Ann Althouse also noted Kranish’s story and quoted a few paragraphs here. You don’t need the skills of a diagnostician to smell the corruption.

Andrew McCarthy concludes his column in the story with this observation:

Dickie Scruggs served five years in federal prison. Patterson, Balducci, and Zach Scruggs were also convicted on various charges and did jail time. Jim Biden was not accused of wrongdoing and, the Post says, was never questioned by the government in connection with the case. Not long after the arrests, Democrats nominated Senator Joe Biden to run as presidential nominee Barack Obama’s vice president.

I imagine that the House impeachment investigators will be interested in the Bidens’ dealings with Scruggs and his associates. More intriguing, I think, is why the Post published it now. Maybe the paper was just waiting for House investigators to leave town for a four-week vacation. Or maybe it decided this was a propitious time to add to media-Democrat-complex alarm regarding President Biden’s 2024 prospects.

I doubt it, but who knows? If the Post really wanted to ring the bell, it could do an investigative story like Kranish’s on the Biden family business as we have come to know it courtesy of the New York Post, the IRS whistleblowers, and the House Oversight Committee. It would involve less original reporting, but it would involve current events bearing on Ukraine and China, it would confirm the obvious, and it would be devastating.