President Joe Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign said this week that the stakes for the upcoming election are “sky high” so it will again accept dark money donations despite previously condemning such donations. 

Biden’s campaign made the statement to CBS News as it reported on a massive $64 million anonymous donation that was sent to his campaign in 2020. The donation was routed to his campaign coffers through the Impetus Fund, a 501c4 tax-exempt organization that says it is focused on “social welfare.” 

This pledge to accept dark money comes after Biden previously said that dark money “erodes public trust” and that it “flows in the shadows to influence our elections.” However, like in 2020, Biden has again signaled he has no issue taken money that is routed to his campaign coffers without scrutiny.

“The stakes of this election are sky high,” a Biden adviser told CBS. “We will protect our democracy with every tool that is legally available.”

The focus on Biden’s acceptance of dark money comes with lingering questions about the mysterious $64 million donation. A large bulk of that donation, $55 million, was moved from Impetus to Future Forward USA Action, a nonprofit Biden super PAC. Then, Future Forward USA Action sent $60 million to Future Forward PAC for use in electioneering, CBS News reported. Since the money was sent to the nonprofit first, the donor/donors were shielded from exposure. 

Little is known about the D.C.-based Impetus Fund except that it says it “works with changemakers across the country to unlock a more inclusive, accessible, and vibrant democracy.” The group’s president, Ezra Reese, is tied to Democrat election lawyer Marc Elias. Reese is the political law chair at the Elias Law Group.

Impetus is a project of Arabella Advisors, a massive leftist dark money group that had about $3 billion on hand for the 2022 midterm elections. Back in 2020, it had $410 million that it used against former President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans.

Biden’s acceptance of dark money funding has drawn criticism from government watchdog groups.

“For too long the left has been playing a game of decrying dark money while at the same time being fully dependent on it, even supercharging Mr. Biden’s reelection campaign,” Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director of Americans for Public Trust, told CBS.

Anna Massoglia, the editorial and investigations manager at OpenSecrets, said that dark money hid important information about who was trying to influence American voters. 

“Without information about who is funding groups spending to influence elections, voters won’t know who is trying to color their views, won’t be aware of any potential conflicts of interest that a funder has or what stake they may have in the outcome of the election,” she said.

So far in the 2024 election cycle, Biden has held a significant advantage in fundraising, but Trump has been pulling closer in recent months with big hulls coming alongside his legal battles.

Last week, Donald Trump, Biden’s chief political opponent, was convicted on 34 felony counts. And Joe Biden said that the justice system had worked. Any talk about the justice system not working was “undermining our democracy,” was “undermining our institutions.”

But now, Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, is in the dock in Wilmington, Delaware, on federal gun charges because it turns out that he pretty clearly lied on his gun registration form when he went to buy a gun.

He clearly was a drug addict. He lied on his forms about being a drug addict. All of that culminated in a situation in which his girlfriend, who at the time was his brother’s widow, apparently was so afraid of Hunter having a gun that she took it, drove it over to a local store, and tossed it in a trash can which happened to be near a school.

The Secret Service then tried to cover it up.

As you’ll recall, this was looked into by Joe Biden’s DOJ. There are whistleblowers who came forward alleging that the Biden DOJ had essentially hamstrung prosecutors from investigating Hunter Biden’s involvement with his father, Joe, and went out of their way to cut some sort of deal to close the tax case that was also being investigated against Hunter Biden.

There were two simultaneous cases being investigated against Hunter Biden. One was the gun charge. The other was the fact that Hunter Biden had spent his entire adult life traveling around the globe, picking up stacks of cash on behalf of the Biden family, because Joe Biden is an extraordinarily corrupt politician on behalf of his own family. Literally every adult member of his family has trafficked in Joe Biden’s name in order to make money, with Joe Biden’s permission and or involvement.

WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show

So there was a full-scale tax investigation going on. Whistleblowers came forward, and they said that Joe Biden’s DOJ had been told to basically look the other way on the tax investigation. This all came to a head when it turned out that the DOJ tried to cut a sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden wherein he would be essentially directed to rehab for his drug problem but as part of the plea agreement, all the tax charges would simply go away. They would randomly be dismissed.

The judge in that particular case looked at this plea agreement and said this makes no sense, how is this okay? Why is it my job to excuse him on the tax charges because you are trying to sign some sort of agreement with him on the drug charges? She asked the prosecution if they were actually freeing him up on the tax charges? They said no. The defense then said if you’re not freeing him up on the tax charges, then we’re not taking the deal. We’re not going to plead guilty in any way if you’re not going to free him up on the tax charges.

The prosecution and the defense had essentially gotten together and decided to try to sneak one past the judge. The judge said no and the whole thing blew up.

That’s how you end up with a prosecution in Wilmington, Delaware, on these gun charges.

This is an open and shut case. It is obvious that Hunter Biden lied on his federal drug forms on his federal gun forms. The Wall Street Journal reported:

On a Friday evening in October 2018, Hunter Biden rolled up in a black Cadillac to StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply in the Delaware city where he had been born and raised. A salesman standing in the window didn’t initially recognize him as the son of the state’s longtime Democratic senator, now-President Biden, and would later recall declining a tip from the younger Biden as he purchased a .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver.

Hunter’s clearly guilty. Everyone in the family knew that he was a drug addict. The Wall Street Journal noted:

In the gun case, federal prosecutors are planning to use the younger Biden’s own words against him. They are expected to draw from excerpts of Biden’s memoir published in 2021, ‘Beautiful Things.’ Among the excerpts is a section of the book about his return to Delaware in October 2018. ‘All my energy revolved around smoking drugs and making arrangements to buy drugs—feeding the beast,’ Hunter Biden wrote in one excerpt that prosecutors referenced in court filings.

Hunter literally wrote in his memoir about being a drug addict at a time he was lying on his federal gun forms. The Journal continues:

In court papers ahead of trial, federal prosecutors have also previewed a witness list that includes Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, and Hallie Biden. Prosecutors didn’t reference either woman by name, but both are identifiable by the descriptions of their respective relationships to Hunter Biden, who had a romantic relationship with Hallie Biden following his brother’s death.

Prosecutors said Buhle checked Hunter Biden’s car periodically because she didn’t want their children in a vehicle with drugs. On about a dozen occasions, prosecutors said, she found drugs or paraphernalia, which she discarded in a trash can. In a March 2018 text message, she wrote: “I also found a few crack pipes. I took them out because our daughter was driving the car.”

Hunter Biden’s defense supposedly is the legality of the gun sale. They’re going to try and blame it on the gun shop. They’re going to say they should have known that he was lying then. They shouldn’t have sold him the gun in the first place, because also they accepted Biden’s passport as identification.

So what is really going on here? I’ll tell you what’s really going on here. Joe Biden won Wilmington, Delaware, the jurisdiction for this trial and his hometown, 26,688 votes to 3,580 votes. Donald Trump won roughly 11.8% of the vote in the jurisdiction where Hunter Biden is currently being tried.

Delaware is a very small state. Joe Biden has long been the favorite son of Delaware because he’s brought home the bacon. Joe Biden was largely involved in the transformation of Delaware from a sleepy backwater to a place where most businesses are organized, particularly credit card businesses, which have made an absolute bundle of their association with Joe Biden over the years.

In other words, this is Joe Biden’s town. This is so much Joe Biden’s town that there are buildings named for him at the University of Delaware, where his wife got her PhD. The Biden family owns Wilmington.

This is the opposite of Donald Trump’s Manhattan trial. You have very strong charges against Hunter Biden, but you have a jury pool in which likely the vast majority of them voted for Hunter’s dad. In Trump’s case, there was a very weak case against Donald Trump, a case that didn’t even specify one specific crime, but you had a jury pool that hated Donald Trump.

So here’s the question for Biden:

Is it better for Joe Biden’s campaign if Hunter Biden is convicted or if he is acquitted? If Hunter Biden is acquitted, everyone is going to see this for what it is, which is that the DOJ tried to cut a sweetheart deal with Joe Biden’s son. They failed when a judge called them on it. Then they brought the prosecution in a jurisdiction that is the most favorable jurisdiction in human history for a defendant, and then either Hunter gets acquitted or there’s a hung jury.

Does that look like a justice system that is working on behalf of the people? Does that really sound like what Joe Biden said about Donald Trump? That no one is above the law if he gets convicted?

Will Hunter be acquitted? It’s doubtful. The charges are too strong. But could there be a hung jury?

You bet.

I’d bet there are at least one or two holdouts inside that jury who believe that the only reason that Hunter is being brought up on charges at all is because of an attempt by the DOJ to look evenhanded.

And if there is a hung jury, Biden will bloviate about how the jury system worked yet again.

* * *

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Donald Trump was convicted on “34 felony counts of murder.” The line has been correct to read “34 felony counts.”