Now that Ben Carson sits near or at the top of the Republican presidential field, the gloves are off. On Friday, Politico launched a defamation assault on the renowned pediatric neurosurgeon by erroneously accusing him of fabricating his decades-old West Point account. At worst, Carson used ambiguous language. What he didn’t do was lie — an allegation the Left still makes. Now the Associated Press has joined the fray with its own hatchet job.

Carson “called for harsh criminal penalties for health care fraud, but the Republican presidential candidate and his wife also have kept millions invested with a close friend who admitted defrauding insurance companies,” according to an AP review. “Pittsburgh dentist Alfonso A. Costa pleaded guilty to a felony count of health care fraud after an FBI probe into his oral surgery practice found he had charged for procedures he never performed, according to court records. Though the crime carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison, Costa was sentenced to house arrest and probation after Carson helped petition a federal judge on behalf of the man he described as ‘one of my closest, if not my very closest friend.’” The trial took place in 2008.

The AP says, “Investments that Carson and his wife made through Costa earn the couple between $200,000 and $2 million a year, according to financial records that Carson was required to file when he declared his candidacy.” And just like that, we have an outright scandal of monolithic proportions. Or so the Leftmedia wants us to believe. “The government urged the judge to make an example of Costa,” according to the AP. The judge, for whatever reason, evidently felt differently. Yet the AP implies Carson’s role in the trial was all about the money without a smidgen of evidence. What was Carson supposed to do, throw him under the bus? If the AP is hunting for cases of financial impropriety, there’s always the Clinton Foundation, which has landed lucrative donations through nefarious practices. And did we mention one of its founders faces the possibility of felony charges? And where was the AP when news surfaced that Chicago slumlord and convicted felon Tony Rezko secretly helped the Obamas buy their Chicago mansion for $300,000 below asking price?