Christopher Fotos at PostWatch comes to the same conclusions I did about that Tom DeLay story in the Washington Post today: The anonymous sources cited are almost certainly leakers from Ronnie Earle’s office, and their goal was to make their case against DeLay seem stronger. But Fotos takes it a step further. He marries those conclusions to the Post’s policy on sources, which states:

Obviously, it is important to share with readers any direct interest our sources may have in the story we are writing. When sources have axes to grind, we should let our readers know what their interest is.

Fotos concludes:

Who’s to say whether [Post reporter R. Jeffrey] Smith’s four anonymous sources shopped the story to him or not. Either way, we’re left in the dark as to their interest in the case. And their motive for leaking? A pure striving for the public good may not be it.
We are compelled to infer, so I will: They want to damage DeLay.

What’s astonishing is that despite the sources’ intentions, the story is actually more damaging to Earle than DeLay. All of us who have been watching the case have been waiting for some bombshell piece of evidence that Earle might have been saving for the trial. But as the Post reports, Earle has no substantial evidence for his case against DeLay. He’s basing it all on a few comments DeLay made to him when DeLay voluntarily met with him in August and on DeLay’s subsequent statements to the media. He has no other witnesses and no documents. Above all, his claim that the underlying campaign-finance transaction constituted money laundering is just that — a claim, and an entirely unprecedented one. Despite the best efforts of Earle’s leakers, his case against DeLay now looks even weaker than before.