Over the past week or so, the mainstream media vultures have been circling Rand Paul’s campaign.

Editors are flogging their pundits and bloggers to get ahead of the next Scott Walker announcement so that no one looks like they were caught flatfooted. Journalists are supposed to look like they know more than you, after all—but they also travel in vulture flocks, or “committees” as they’re called in buzzardom, an apt word for the mindless follower-instincts of hackius maximus. And if you’re looking for the next candidate to drop out, vulture logic says it’s gotta be the candidate who fits the “Spectacular Rise & Fall” description better than anyone. And that of course means Rand Paul.

A year ago, Sen. Paul was the face of New York Times magazine’s cover story announcing America’s “Libertarian Moment”, declared “the most interesting man in politics” on the cover of Time magazine and in Politico magazine; named “The 2016 Republican Frontrunner” in both the Atlantic and US News & World Report; and a year earlier, in 2013, the WaPo called Sen. Paul “the most interesting man in the (political) world” while the New Republic flat-out annointed him “President Rand Paul”.

While wowing the media establishment elites, Senator Paul was positioning himself as the belle of the Big Tech billionaire donors’ ball. Among Valley heavyweights who either raised money for Paul or were reported to be in close talks with the candidate about financing his run: Larry Ellison, Sean Parker, Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, PayPal Mafia’s Scott Banister, and former Cisco CEO John Chambers.  Peter Thiel (a Pando investor) and Mark Zuckerberg were either close to committing, or helping line up other Rand Paul billionaire donors.

As I reported here on Pando, most of the Valley’s billionaires quietly and quickly abandoned Rand Paul’s campaign this past spring — along with Paul’s biggest sugar daddies of all, the Koch brothers. It turns out to have been a simple case of rats fleeing a doomed ship: Rand Paul’s campaign chiefs were indicted by the feds for fraud and conspiracy over their role in bribing an Iowa Tea Party politician to publicly back Ron Paul’s run for president in 2012 (Rand is using the same names, structures and donors as his pa, while the other side of his mouth derides crony capitalism). That criminal trial started yesterday, with Rand Paul’s former campaign chief and nephew-in-law, Jesse Benton, standing trial for lying to the FBI—and reports say Ron Paul will be called to the stand.

That’s the obvious reason why the big donors backed away from Rand Paul’s campaign—it’s run by indicted alleged criminals under the Paul family’s protection...