json.loads throwing error when the JSON is valid

I have json data that you can download from here (its too long to paste here). This data is being read from a file and loaded using json.loads(str). For example:

path = open(file_path_presented).read())
try:
    retval = json.load(open(path))
except Exception as e:
    if "File name too long" in str(e):
        retval = json.loads(path)
        # erroring out here with the json in the link

Every time I load this json I receive the following error:

EXCEPTION INFORMATION: Traceback (most recent call):
  File "/mnt/c/Users/rando/bin/python/mt/api/api_handler.py", line 932, in get
    retval = json.loads(str(path))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 339, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 364, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 380, in raw_decode
    obj, end = self.scan_once(s, idx)
Unterminated string starting at: line 1 column 25 (char 24)

My best guess is that this error has something to do with the json data having { and } characters in it that are not being escaped properly because it only happens sometimes and not all the time. I've used multiple linters and all of them say that the JSON is valid JSON, along with jq. How can I load this json with throwing an error?

I've tried loading the data as a StringIO into json.load(io) with:

from StringIO import StringIO

io = StringIO(path)
retval = json.load(io)

As well as fixing the JSON using a regex, and using json.loads(path, strict=False) However these all produce the sane error

There doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the JSON data.

You may not be using the most appropriate technique for converting it to a Python dictionary.

Consider this:

import requests
import json

TARGET = '/Volumes/G-Drive/foo.json'
with requests.get('https://pastebin.com/raw/X8f4Nz6v', stream=True) as r:
    r.raise_for_status()
    with open(TARGET, 'wb') as j:
        for chunk in r.iter_content(4096):
            j.write(chunk)
with open(TARGET) as j:
    d = json.load(j)

This code runs to completion without any exception(s)

Optionally:

If you don't want to create a local file you can just build a bytearray as follows:

with requests.get('https://pastebin.com/raw/X8f4Nz6v', stream=True) as r:
    r.raise_for_status()
    b = bytearray()
    for chunk in r.iter_content(4096):
        b += chunk
    d = json.loads(b.decode())