Rudy Giuliani spent the spring of 2019 peddling a sordid tale on behalf of his client President Donald Trump about former Vice President Joe Biden in an effort to derail his presidential campaign and push back against special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. In Giuliani’s telling, Biden had corruptly sought the removal of a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to bolster the business interests of his son, Hunter. That wasn’t true -- but the propagandists at Fox ran with the story, and the president’s subsequent obsession with it eventually triggered the abuse of power scandal that led to his impeachment.

A year and a half later, with the president badly trailing in polls 20 days before the election, the same crew is making another run at the same story -- and trying to get the mainstream media to take the bait. But the central contention of the smear is still false, the source of the new details used to revive it is incredibly sketchy, and Giuliani’s involvement should give journalists pause given his role as a known conduit for Russian disinformation.