That’s Tom DeLay’s attorney Dick DeGuerin on the revelation that Travis County district attorney Ronnie Earle, pressed finally to show his evidence now that he has his indictments, does not have the document on which he rested his entire case against DeLay: a list of seven Texas House candidates, which DeLay’s Texas PAC allegedly sent to the RNC with a check and instructions to divide it among the candidates’ 2002 election campaigns (summary of the charges here and here).

To come up without this crucial piece of evidence is like Michael Jackson’s prosecutors coming to court without a kid — without it there’s no crime. And remember — Earle also hasn’t revealed what evidence, if any, he has that would tie DeLay to the money transfer whether it was legal or not.

Ronnie Earle, like many Texas Democrats, believes the Texas redistricting was a serious abuse of power. But I can think of no three words more appropriate to describe what he has done to Tom DeLay, except maybe one: magic. As Byron York has reported, Earle’s abusive and desperate prosecution has magically made Tom DeLay a sympathetic figure on the right, just as conservatives were turning on him for his ties to sleazy lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his comments that the bloated federal budget had been pared down pretty good on his watch. When the indictments first came down, I doubted DeLay would ever resume his leadership position in the House. But as skeptical as I was about Ronnie Earle, even I never dreamed he didn’t have the document on which he based the indictment. Wow. I was wrong.

ALSO: The Houston Chronicle story also reports that Earle has subpoenaed the phone records of a DeLay associate’s 17-year-old daughter. Classy.

Since he can’t produce the list, maybe Earle will try to prove that the teen’s “Nickelback” ringtone was used to signal the RNC.