Jill Biden's former husband says he raised $3000 to fund a union picket line organized by notorious mob hitman Frank 'The Irishman...
Jill Biden's former husband says he raised $3000 to fund a union picket line organized by notorious mob hitman Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran designed to help Joe Biden win election to the Senate in 1972.
The extraordinary claim is made in a new book that revisits the story of how a newspaper blockade prevented anti-Biden adverts reaching voters in the final days of campaigning in Delaware.
The details - contained in 'The Bidens: Inside the First Family's Fifty-year Rise to Power' by Ben Shreckinger which is published by Twelve Books on Sept. 21 - will reignite debate over how much Biden knew about union efforts to tip the scales in his favor.
The tale centers on how Biden's long-shot campaign could come from 30 points behind to snatch an unlikely victory.
Sheeran, whose life would later be turned into a Martin Scorsese movie, was a local Teamsters official in Wilmington, where Biden lived, in 1972.
He made no secret of his support for the Democrat, describing how he had prevented the Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs addressing union members.
But he apparently offered more information about his role in a series of interviews that formed the basis of the book 'I Heard You Paint Houses' by Charles Brandt.
Joe Biden was the unfancied challenger to Republican incumbent Sen. J. Caleb Boggs in 1972. In a new book, Jill Biden's former husband Bill Stevenson (r) claims he had a central role in a ploy to help Biden upset the odds, paying $3000 to fund a union picket line to prevent his rival's newspaper adverts reaching voters in the last days of the campaign
Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran was a Teamster official in Wilmington when Biden was seeking election to the U.S. Senate. According to 'I Heard You Paint Houses,' published in 2004, he said he arranged a picket line to prevent delivery of Delaware newspapers that were due to carry anti-Biden adverts in the final days of the campaign
Democratic Senator-elect Joseph Biden is sworn in after being elected to the Senate in 1972. He had just turned thirty and was the youngest senator in Congress when he took his seat
'The Bidens: Inside the First Family's Fifty-year Rise to Power' by Ben Shreckinger is published by Twelve Books on Sept. 21
It describes how an unnamed Democratic lawyer visited Sheeran in his office, near Wilmington train station (now named the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station) with a request.
Could Sheeran prevent copies of the Morning News and the Evening Journal being delivered in the final days of the campaign when they were due to carry adverts for Boggs?
The ads were designed to refute Biden's criticism of Boggs' voting record.
'I told him I would hire some people and put them on the picket line for him. They were people nobody would mess with ... ' Sheeran is quoted as saying.
Once the line was in place, Sheeran said, he would see to it that no truck driver went in or out.
'The line went up and the newspapers were printed, but they stayed in the warehouse and they never were delivered....' he continued, adding that the picket line came down a day after the election.
'I have no way of knowing if Joe Biden knew if that picket line thing was done on purpose on his behalf.
'If he did know he never let on to me.'
Several key elements were contradicted by newspaper reports from the time. And after the book was published in 2004, a spokesman for Biden denied any knowledge of the alleged scheme.
But now Bill Stevenson, who was married to the first lady from 1970 to 1975, offers fresh details.
Stevenson was married to Jill Biden from 1970 to 1975 and has previously claimed that she had an affair with Biden before they were divorced. In a new book, he says he paid $3000 to Sheeran who told him he had a 'plan that will probably win us the election'
Sheeran was played by Robert De Niro in the 2019 Netflix movie of his life as a mob hitman, directed by Martin Scorsese
Sheeran's life was turned into the movie The Irishman, based on interviews he gave to former homicide prosecutor Charles Brandt, published in 'I Heard You Paint Houses.' However, several claims, including that Sheeran murdered mob-connected union boss Jimmy Hoffa have been challenged as the fantasies of a dying man
Shreckinger, a reporter with Politico, said Stevenson claimed he knew more about the newspaper strike.
'He told me that toward the end of the campaign, Frank paid him a visit and asked for some cash,' wrote Shreckinger.
'“There’s a plan that will probably win us the election,” he said Frank told him. So Stevenson said he scrounged up just under $3,000 and handed it over.
'After the election, Stevenson said that one of the Bidens, he could not remember which one, told him his money had paid for the strike.
'Stevenson said that after the new senator was sworn in, his friend Joe “Boom” Beck, an official with the Carpenters Union, took Sheeran around to the Stone Balloon [the bar then owned by Stevenson], where he introduced Stevenson to the Teamsters boss as “the guy who took care of the tab for the News Journal strike.”'
Shreckinger tried to track down the lawyer described by Sheeran. Of two possible names, one denied any involvement and the other did not respond to enquiries.
Those dead ends will only increase skepticism of the account, given the unreliability of the two sources.
Sheeran was dying when he gave his interviews. Several of his claims - most notably that he murdered mob-connected union boss Jimmy Hoffa - have been debunked by journalists.
Joe Biden carries both of his sons, Joseph R. III, left, and Robert H., during an appearance at the Democratic state convention in the summer of 1972. At center is his wife Neilia Biden, who died in a car crash, along with their daughter Naomi, on Dec. 20, 1972
The Bidens were married in 1977, after being introduced by Joe Biden's brother Frank two years earlier. He had to propose five times before she said yes
And Stevenson was twice convicted of financial fraud in the 1980s, sentenced first to six years probation for passing bad checks and later to another four years probation for fraudulently obtaining a loan.
Last year, just before Biden's election vtctory, he claimed his then wife began an affair with Joe Biden before they were divorced - which the first lady has denied.
Contemporaneous newspaper reports also contradict Sheeran's story that a picket line prevented delivery of the adverts.
On the two days in question, the newspapers were not printed at all as the Printers Union briefly joined the strike, according to the Wilmington News Journal. It also reported that the picket line did not come down on the day after the election, as Sheeran claimed, but later in the month once the 20-day strike had ended.
The White House declined to respond to the new claims.
'Whether or not the Bidens played any role in ginning up the strike as Stevenson claims, their 1972 campaign sealed an alliance with organized labor that would last for decades,' concludes Shreckinger.
'At the time, organized labor had its fair share of tough guys and corruption. Joe never got wrapped up in the big scandals that shook the unions, but as he hit his stride as a lawmaker in Washington, he and his relatives kept a foot in the more rough-and-tumble world of working men.'
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