No Evidence Against Delay? No Matter

In a nutshell: Corporations gave $190,000 to DeLay's PAC. Legal. The PAC sent the money to the Republican National State Elections Committee which subsequently placed it in an account for corporate donations. Legal. The following October this Republican Committee sent a similar amount of money, from a non-corporate account, to seven Texas Republican candidates. Legal.

Prosecutor Ronnie Earl says that there is a document that proves that the director of the DeLay PAC, John Colyandro, sent a list of the seven Republican candidates to the Republican committee asking that $190,000 be contributed to their campaigns, and that this list was sent about the same time as the money.

Earle claims that there is a relationship between the money sent, and the request by Colyandro, and that this constitutes money laudering.

When DeLay's lawyers asked to see this document, Ronnie Earl produced a "copy" of a printout of an Excel spreadsheet which mentions 17 candidates and $230,000. There is no signature and no date. When asked, Earl's team said it was a "similar list" to the one which was mentioned in the indictment. Huh?

So how can Earle prove that this list, that they can't produce, was authored by Colyandro and that DeLay knew about it?

According to the Houston Chronicle, everything falls upon the three-year-old memory of the former RNC deputy director Terry Nelson, who allegedly received the list. But it is yet to be seen how this implicates DeLay in any way.

OK. The judge that issued the warrant for DeLay, Judge Bob Perkins, has contributed money to a PAC opposed to DeLay's PAC... and he has also given money to moveon.org. These charges come in a very Democrat county whose Democrats are quite peeved at DeLay's re-districting accomplishments.

So where is the evidence of a crime? Where is the evidence against DeLay? The Liberal Media broadcasts the mug shot and and repeats the charges, but they don't talk about the lack of evidence. Maybe they're too busy talking about another "no-crime" issue involving a man named Rove.

The National Review's Spuriell says that Ronnie Earle clearly has no case and that the charges will be thrown out if they ever reach a courtroom.