Kamala Harris, who may be the next president of the United States, “hates bullies” and those who are “using power to diminish people.” That’s what the vice president recently told Rolling Stone magazine.

Harris is also the queen of opposition research or “oppo”—and she has used her power to destroy a lot of people. Harris would oppo her own mother to win an election. Which naturally leads me to ask a question.

Did Vice President Harris have a hand in the implosion of Joe Biden?

I have no proof she did, but it’s not crazy talk, either. Think about it. Harris has always been obsessed with power. The president is not doing well in the polls and, mentally, he is fading fast. If he loses in November, Harris goes down with him—a loss from which it would be difficult to recover. Why not do something to shake up the game so that she has her shot now, instead of trying to mount a comeback later after losing with Joe in November?

Harris’s eagerness to punch down has startled even her Democratic allies. On Aug. 7, 2020, Democratic insider David Axelrod expressed alarm at the amount of opposition research being used in the contest to become Joe Biden’s running mate. “I can’t remember any VP selection process where so much oppo research has been dumped,” Axelrod tweeted. “If I were @JoeBiden, looking for a good and loyal partner, that should be a source of concern.” 

Reporter Ryan Grim replied: “Axelrod is being polite. But if you check @KamalaHarris FEC records, she spent more on oppo research than anybody has ever seen. When called on it, her camp said it was ‘self research’ but nobody believed it.”

One person Harris has praised and with whom she likes to work is the father of oppo research, a man name Averell “Ace” Smith. Smith, the son of former San Francisco District Attorney Arlo Smith, grew up in San Francisco. At 13, in 1972, Ace campaigned for George McGovern. In the 1980s, Smith served as political director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, working with Rahm Emanuel. Smith started doing oppo in 1988, digging through newspaper morgues, financial records, libraries, anyplace that would yield the arsenic that could poison a political opponent. Smith has worked for Richard Daley, Ann Richards, Barbara Boxer, Howard Dean, Dianne Feinstein, the Clintons—and Kamala Harris. At a book party in July 2018, just weeks after Brett Kavanaugh was nominated for the Supreme Court, Harris appeared with Smith, calling him “the father of oppo research.”

“I’ve seen him walk into a room, and the opposition candidate will literally start mumbling,” said former Democratic strategist Clint Reilly, who ran campaigns for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former Democratic state Treasurer Kathleen Brown. “They’re just totally terrified with his presence.” Chris Lehane, a former Al Gore and John Kerry staffer, told The New Republic that “Ace is like Bobby DeNiro in The Untouchables—he always brings a gun to a knife fight.” The San Francisco Gate said that Smith “has honed a reputation as a take-no-prisoners opposition researcher, one so skilled at digging up dirt that he’s earned the nickname ‘Dr. Death.’”

Oppo researchers gather their information—some of which is not even true—and then pick the right moment to dump it. That moment is often when a campaign is underway, and it would be impossible to reverse course.

On July 4, a devastating story about Joe Biden’s dementia appeared in New York Magazine. It was written by Olivia Nuzzi. Nuzzi, who is engaged to leftist Politico journalist Ryan Lizza, was once accused of illegally entering the home of former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to steal a photo album. Nuzzi told Columbia Journalism Review that she contacted her boyfriend after entering the townhouse, who told her it “probably wasn’t legal” since she entered the home without permission. “I texted my boyfriend, ‘You know, I just walked into the house, because nobody was answering at the door.’ And he said it probably wasn’t legal and that I should leave. I was like, ‘F—,’” Nuzzi said. 

In her New York Magazine piece, Nuzzi wrote that in January she

began hearing similar stories from Democratic officials, activists, and donors. All people who supported the president and were working to help reelect him to a second term in office. Following encounters with the president, they had arrived at the same concern: Could he really do this for another four years? Could he even make it to Election Day?

These people

lived and socialized in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles. They did not wish to come forward with their stories. They did not want to blow a whistle. They wished that they could whistle past what they knew and emerge in November victorious and relieved, having helped avoid another four years of Trump. What would happen after that? They couldn’t think that far ahead. Their worries were more immediate.

In other words, Joe Biden has dementia.

Could all of this have been going on without Harris knowing about it?

I don’t think so. But then, I tend to be paranoid and believe the worst about the vice president. Harris dragged me into one of her nightmares in 2018, during the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Brett Kavanaugh—an event I describe in my book The Devil’s Triangle.

In his own book Search and Destroy: Inside the Campaign Against Brett Kavanaugh, reporter Ryan Lovelace writes that two days before the Sept. 27, 2018 hearing featuring Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of sexual assault, the staff of Senator Harris turned over to Senate investigators a letter from a “Jane Doe” in Oceanside, California, claiming that Kavanaugh and a friend had raped her. A woman named Judy Munro-Leighton then claimed to be “Jane Doe.” She later recanted, admitting she did not know Kavanaugh and had pulled the stunt because she “just wanted to get attention.”

Would you put demolishing Joe Biden past the woman who was willing to set up Kavanaugh and launched fake rape accusations? I know I wouldn’t.