TRAILING IN the polls, and with no tangible agenda for a second term, President Trump is doing his best to tear down Democratic nominee Joe Biden. That’s hardly an unprecedented strategy, and some of the policy-based arguments being advanced by speakers at the Republican National Convention this week fall within the normal bounds of campaign debate, even if some of the hyperbole is beyond those bounds. Mr. Biden, it’s said, will be controlled by the Democratic left; he will raise taxes; he will be too soft on China.
There is another strand of the attacks, however, that is as depraved as it is scurrilous. The Trump campaign is attempting to portray Mr. Biden and his family as neck-deep in corruption, based on allegations that have repeatedly been demonstrated to be false. In effect, the Republicans accuse the former vice president of secretly doing what Mr. Trump has accomplished overtly during the past three years — using his office to enrich himself and his family.
Leading the GOP charge on Tuesday was Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general who in 2013 received a $25,000 contribution from a Trump charity six days after her office said it was looking into fraud charges against Trump University. The investigation did not go forward. Incredibly, Ms. Bondi opened her case against Mr. Biden by repeating the lie that led to Mr. Trump’s impeachment: that Mr. Biden demanded the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating a gas company that employed the then-vice president’s son Hunter.