Let’s stipulate, as they say on Law & Order, that the New York Times was guilty as sin of kneecapping Hillary Clinton during her ill-managed 2008 presidential run.

And let’s also stipulate that the Grey Lady might be taking a mulligan this time around.

Even so, this Business Day report yesterday about Clinton dybbuk Edward Klein’s new book, Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas, seemed excessively, well, editorial for a news piece.

A Provocateur’s Book on Clinton Overtakes Her Memoir in Sales

Of all the headaches of her current book tour — the declining sales, the constant travel, the interviews that generated unkind headlines about her family’s wealth — this one may sting Hillary Rodham Clinton the most: Her memoir, “Hard Choices,” has just been toppled from its spot on the best-seller list by a sensational Clinton account by her longtime antagonist Edward Klein.

It is a powerful statement about today’s publishing realities that Mr. Klein’s book, a 320-page unauthorized and barely sourced account full of implausible passages, including one about a physical altercation between Mrs. Clinton and President Obama, has landed atop the New York Times best-seller list, knocking “Hard Choices” to No. 2.

Get that? Barely sourced. Implausible passages.

But wait! There’s more!

Mr. Klein is capitalizing on the confluence of two potent market forces: the conservative book-buying public, which has continued to generate sales despite the industry’s overall slump, and the seemingly insatiable appetite for intimate details about the Clintons’ family lives, even when the details themselves are factually suspect . . .

The suspenseful page-turner paints a Shakespearean (if unbelievable) portrait of power, lust and clashes between and within the two first families.

Interestingly, the piece (by Amy Chozick and Alexandra Alter) waits until the 18th graf to note that Klein is “a former editor at Newsweek and The New York Times Magazine.”

Poison from the fruit tree, as a mook once said on Law & Order.