Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden pays for his order at a Krispy Kreme following a campaign town hall on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2019, in Spartanburg, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

There’s a quote that gets thrown around by conservatives that has been attributed to everyone from Karl Marx to Saul Alinsky to Antifa and it basically says something to the effect of: “accuse your opponent of what you are doing to sow discord and confusion and put your opponent on the defensive.”

I can’t find an attributable source of the quote but the spirit of it is certainly one embraced by the modern Democrat party and progressives in general. One need look no farther than this newest scandal involving Ukraine for proof.

The theory from Democrats is that some unknown do-gooder whistleblower heard details of a call Trump had with the President of Ukraine, wherein the US president promised to withhold aide if Ukraine didn’t address corruption in their country (and possibly provide information on Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s shady business dealing in there).

“Scandal!,” the Democrats and their media partners have been screaming since the story broke, most recently in today’s Washington Post’s “The Fix” which theorizes Trump made statements at the UN to lay down a “preemptive defense” if the scandal is fully brought to light.

But — as has been the case with all these “gotcha!” moments in the wake of the death of the Russia collusion narrative — the whistleblower may not actually exist.

It turns out the complaint is nothing more than a rumor reported by someone in the intelligence community. Buried in a lengthy CNN article about the complaint is the following paragraph:

The whistleblower didn’t have direct knowledge of the communications, an official briefed on the matter told CNN. Instead, the whistleblower’s concerns came in part from learning information that was not obtained during the course of their work, and those details have played a role in the administration’s determination that the complaint didn’t fit the reporting requirements under the intelligence whistleblower law, the official said.

Granted, this is yet another anonymous source giving more context on what another anonymous source told a different outlet, but it still calls the entire story into question.

What appears to actually be happening is what that unattributed quote up above alludes to: blaming the other side for your own transgressions to cause confusion and defensiveness. What the Democrats are accusing Trump of doing was, almost to the letter, what they themselves did to protect Biden’s son Hunter’s shady business dealings in Ukraine. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, whether he realized it or not, gave the game away on Morning Joe.

.@JohnKerry: "There is no equivalency whatsoever between what Donald Trump did and the fact that our administration at the direction of the president and with the professionals in the State Department making the calls saying we need to get the corruption out of Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/lN0c0DGFUz

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 23, 2019

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin summed it up pretty handily with Jake Tapper last week when he said, “I think the real issue here is not what the president said, but what, indeed, did Biden’s son do?”

And what did Hunter Biden allegedly do? Rudy Giuliani, in a Twitter thread, says he received a lot of laundered money while his father was serving as the Obama administration’s liaison with Ukraine and was working to root out corruption.

Hunter took a board position with a natural gas extractions company called Burisma Holdings. While the Obama administration said there was no conflict of interest, Giuliani says otherwise.

President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani ​early Monday ​accused Ukraine of laundering $3 million to Joe Biden’s son Hunter and questioned how former President Barack Obama could have allowed it to happen.

​”NEW FACT: One $3​ ​million payment to Biden’s son from Ukraine to Latvia to Cyprus to US​,” Giuliani wrote on Twitter at 2:22 a.m. ​

What’s more, Trump and Giuliani have suggested that the elder Biden pushed for the firing of Viktor Shokin, Ukraine’s general prosecutor, to stop his investigation into Burisma.

The elder Biden has appeared at times to brag about this last little wielding of power.

Flashback: @JoeBiden in 2018 brags about getting Ukrainian prosecutor fired.

"I look at him and say we’re leaving in six hours, if the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money. Oh, son of a bitch got fired." pic.twitter.com/w97Sdy0Nsm

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 23, 2019

If Biden, who has already been brutally rude on the campaign trail to reporters asking him questions about Ukraine, indeed is using the strategy of projection, it might indicate a last ditch effort to divert attention away from himself before the story gets even bigger. And, according to Giuliani, a bigger pay-to-play story — one involving China — could be breaking very soon.

Rudy Giuliani: "What I'm talking about, this, it's Ukrainian collusion, which was large, significant, and proven with Hillary Clinton, with the DNC, a woman named Chalupa, with the ambassador, with an FBI agent who's now been hired by George Soros who was funding a lot of it" pic.twitter.com/nNFyXnHA7r

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) September 23, 2019