where there's smoke

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” she replied.

The line being thrown around, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” is meaningless unless proven.

Where there’s smoke, there’s a hellhound.

“It’s not like where there’s smoke, there’s fire. It’s like the smoke is actually a lie and a federal felony.”

But the point of all this is to dirty up Joe Biden as corrupt to give some red meat to the Trump followers and make the rest of the country assume "where there's smoke there's fire" which is something they've been successful at doing against their enemies for decades.