Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) dismissed a bombshell Wall Street Journal story Sunday about a Clinton charity aiding a company owned by Clinton allies as motivated by bias from the newspaper's editors.

The paper reported last week that the Clinton Global Initiative set up a $2 million financial commitment to benefit a company "part-owned by people with ties to the Clintons, including a current and a former Democratic official and a close friend of former President Bill Clinton."

"What do you say to those who see this report and say, ‘Boy, this looks an awful lot like crony capitalism?" CNN host Jake Tapper asked.

Brown, a potential running mate of Hillary Clinton on the 2016 Democratic ticket, said he hadn't read the report and attacked the credibility of the newspaper's editors.

"I understand the difference between reporters at The Wall Street Journal, who are some of the best in the land, and their editors, and I think that you're going to see coming out of The Wall Street Journal a crescendo of attacks on Clinton in ways that are generally unfair," Brown said. "I don't know enough about this report. I do know, though, that The Wall Street Journal probably won't be writing much about the good things the Clinton Global Initiative has done to combat international poverty, and I've worked on a lot of those issues.

"I welcome the work that the Clinton Global Initiative has done, with groups and individuals like Bono and all that's happened around the world, and so I think if that's going to be the Republican attack on Hillary, it's not going to work."

Tapper noted that would likely not be the only Republican line of criticism against Clinton on the campaign trail.

The Wall Street Journal further reported: