As RedState reported previously, charges were filed today in New York against the Trump Organization and a CFO named Allen Weisselberg. They stemmed from taxes allegedly not paid on so-called “fringe benefits.” With Weisselberg pleading not guilty, how much evidence there actually is of wrongdoing will be something that plays out in court. What we do know is that prosecutions on these grounds are essentially unheard of. Make of that what you will, but I think most will come to the conclusion that this is blatantly political and an abuse of the system.

Regardless, it’s impossible to deny that the charges filed are anti-climatic in the extreme for a far-left that has moved from one great hope to another pursuing the dream of “getting” Donald Trump. Unpaid taxes on fringe benefits is hardly the frog march in handcuffs of the former president they were hoping for.

Yet, among the embers of yet another smoldering ruin of partisan pursuit, a crackling flame of hope still burns.

If Weisselberg and his son were being paid off books … what are the chances that the Trump family were being paid off books?

— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) July 1, 2021

Let’s recap for posterity’s sake. We’ve had the weaponization of the intelligence community against Trump and his family since he burst onto the national political scene. Then we had a multi-year special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller that wasted tens of millions of dollars to produce some process crimes against associates. After that, we got the SDNY investigating Trump, again finding nothing to charge him on. Lastly, for the past three years, we’ve had the state of New York in on the action, with their big find being some possible mistakes in tax filings that don’t implicate Trump.

Yet, after all that, Ruhle and others are still convinced there’s another shoe that’s going to drop. To put it succinctly — they are never going to stop.

These people have convinced themselves that they are so righteous and their politics so pure that anyone who opposes them is not only evil but must be a criminal as well. It doesn’t matter that every single attempt to take down Trump legally has failed. They will simply move onto the next one.

Of course, the next thing, in this case, is the idea that Weisselberg will “flip.”

Nobody knows if today increases the odds Weisselberg will flip, but unless you've been there it's hard to convey the impact of being handcuffed and fingerprinted, marched past cameras, standing before a judge, facing a trial, waking up every morning in legal and financial peril.

— Ross Garber (@rossgarber) July 1, 2021

How many times do we have to do this?

Here’s the thing with trying to get someone to flip — they have to have someone to actually flip on. For years we’ve seen person after person supposedly primed to “flip” on Trump. None of it has amounted to anything, and there’s no reason to think these hopes will amount to anything now. At some point, the logical conclusion is that Trump may not be everyone’s cup of tea politically, but that he’s simply not a criminal. When even the political prosecutors in New York are shooting blanks, it’s probably time to pack it in.

But again, these people are not going to stop, and they won’t stop with Trump, for that matter. Whichever Republican rises to prominence and the presidential nomination in 2024 will face the same onslaught. The weaponization of the government by partisan actors looking to criminalize politics is here to stay.