Tom DeLay Exonerated: You Heard It Here First

On September 28, 2005, the day after corrupt DA Ronnie Earle indicted former Majority Leader Tom DeLay on trumped-up charges, I wrote:

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has indicted House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in connection with the same campaign finance investigation that Earle has been conducting for a long time. Earle is a notorious Democratic Party hack whom we’ve written about before. …

[T]he indictment…is pathetic.

We covered the DeLay prosecution extensively and predicted repeatedly that, since Earle’s political hit-job had no legal basis, DeLay would eventually be exonerated. We were right, but it took much longer than it should have. Earle was able to procure a conviction on a “money laundering” charge that related to political campaign finance. Today a Texas Court of Appeals finally put Earle’s prosecution out of its misery:

In documents released early Thursday, however, an appeals court said the evidence in the case was “legally insufficient to sustain DeLay’s convictions.”

“I’m very happy about it,” DeLay said in Washington Thursday. “I’m so glad they wrote the ruling about it because the ruling says I never should have been charged, much less indicted.”

The court said all judgments against DeLay were reversed, and the former congressman was formally acquitted.

As sometimes happens, justice comes too late. DeLay is now 66, and his career–maybe his life–was ruined by the Democratic Party’s legal harassment. Glenn Reynolds quotes an Ann Althouse commenter, and adds:

“Between Ted Stevens, the IRS case, and now this — people are going to seriously start asking if there’s organized use of the federal government against Republicans.” The Delay case was a state prosecution, but prosecutor Ronnie Earle was clearly playing politics, as were the DOJ people going after Ted Stevens. And the IRS folks, too, obviously.

Meanwhile, what accountability for Ronnie Earle now?

Ronnie Earle is in a class with Mike Nifong, the notorious persecutor of Duke lacrosse players. It would be nice if Earle, like Nifong, would go to jail, but that isn’t going to happen. Still, despite everything, it is good to see Tom DeLay exonerated, and his Democratic Party persecutors foiled.

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