Watch CNN get completely desperate to concoct some kind of terrible story about Bill Clinton in order to get to Hillary Clinton.

Here's the story in condensed form. Bill Clinton was invited to a speaking engagement which he turned down. George W. Bush took them up on the invitation, which came from a company which was later implicated in a securities Ponzi scheme. CNN thinks the fact that an invitation to Bill Clinton was even sent is somehow something he should explain.

Seriously.

President Bill Clinton's aides once explored the possibility of him addressing a lavish energy conference, whose sponsor the Securities and Exchange Commission later accused of using a Ponzi-like scheme to obtain the money to cover the $200,000 speaker fee. The possibility of Clinton's participation in the event was discussed in an email from Clinton staff to a State Department official obtained by CNN.

Instead, Clinton's successor, President George W. Bush, spoke at the September 2012 event, billed as a "U.S. China Energy Summit."

The company, Luca International, and its top executives are now the subject of a lawsuit alleging securities fraud brought by the SEC in July. The complaint alleges that Luca misspent millions in foreign investor funds for improper purposes, including the summit, an all-expenses-paid golf junket to Pebble Beach, California, designed to recruit more Asian investors to the company.

An email provided to the conservative group Citizens United, obtained by CNN, shows Clinton was initially presented with the offer to speak at the conference and his staff sought permission from the State Department to accept the invitation and its $200,000 speaker fee. Citizens United received the email as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act for correspondence between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton's top aides.

"Would (the U.S. government) have any concerns about (Bill Clinton) taking this and directing the proceeds to the Clinton Foundation?" a Bill Clinton staffer asked several top advisers to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in June 2012.

Let's be clear: Citizens United provided that email via their friends over at Judicial Watch, who have been the ones spearheading the disgorgement of Hillary Clinton's emails, and Citizens United has their own chip on their shoulder.

The article also acknowledges that it is based on an email between a Clinton staffer and State Department officials who reviewed such potential speaking engagements "provided to the conservative group Citizens United" and "obtained by CNN." Citizens United is headed by David Bossie, who in 1998 was fired from his job as chief investigator for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform -- which was investigating alleged Clinton White House finance abuses -- because he released selectively edited transcripts that gave the false impression that then-first lady Hillary Clinton had been implicated in wrongdoing. His group regularly releases shoddy "documentaries" smearing progressives.

This story has nothing to do with the Clintons. However, if CNN wants a story, they ought to get busy investigating whether it presents a conflict of interest to JEB! Bush, who is running for president and might have some conflict of interest with his brother receiving $200,000 from a Ponzi schemer.

The Clinton Derangement Syndrome is in overdrive here. There's absolutely nothing to see here, folks, unless you're concerned about the associations of the Bush family.