Woman angry at Biden over business dispute buys $500K in attack ads in early-voting states

A woman angry at former Vice President Joe Biden because of a business dispute that hurt her son’s company reportedly bought $500,000 in attack ad time in early voting states aimed at slamming the Democratic White House hopeful.

Shirley Shawe’s one-minute ad blasted the Delaware Chancery Court system — which settles disputes involving state-based corporations — as “too male, too white, and it’s anything but open” and shows clips of Biden, as a senator, defending the system during a 2005 congressional hearing in opposition to  Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was then a law professor at Harvard University.

“In what sense do you mean open?” Biden said in the ad.

{mosads}“Employees of companies … literally cannot go to Delaware and hire local counsel, and that effectively cuts thousands of small employees,” Warren said. “If they can’t afford it, they aren’t there.”

The ad’s narrator concludes: “We agree with Elizabeth Warren. It’s time to shine a light on the Chancery Court.”

During the hearing, Biden and Warren clashed over the bankruptcy courts — separate from the Chancery Court — but the clip in the ad uses a snippet from their exchange on bankruptcy courts, giving off the impression that Biden’s supporting the Chancery Court and Warren is opposing it, CBS News reports.

Biden’s and Warren’s presidential campaigns are urging for the ad — which is set to air this week in Iowa, New Hampshire and Delaware, along with print newspaper ads that are in production — to be taken down, with Biden’s camp saying it “misrepresents” what actually happened.

“The ad misrepresents Vice President Biden’s position in this exchange from 2005 by manipulating footage to suggest he means one court when he means another,” Biden campaign national press secretary Jamal Brown told CBS News in a statement. “It’s a clear reminder of the way that third-party money poisons our politics with false attack ads, and it has no place in this race.”

Warren campaign spokesman Chris Hayden told CBS News: ”Elizabeth does not believe individual donors should have an outsized influence in this primary, and has consistently said that Super PACs or individuals with the means to finance ad campaigns on their own should stay out of the primary.”

Shawe’s targeting the Chancery Court system comes after son’s software company faced a years-long litigation process with the system that cost $250 million, Delaware Business Now reports.

“As a citizen, I’m free to use my voice, and I will not agree to remove stop my campaign, until the issue of Chancery Court corruption is addressed,” she told CBS News.