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I knew a guy in Kansas City, and he got arrested for something involving somebody else's money.

The guy was looking at a sentence of maybe five years, but he didn't have much of a record, and his mother put up her house for bail, and his defense attorney took the deal, and the guy got three years of supervised probation.

After he completed the probation, he used to tell people he'd been found innocent because he hadn't gone to jail.

"They don't give you probation because you're innocent," I told him. "They give you probation because you're guilty, but they think maybe you won't do it again if they keep an eye on you for a while."

Eventually, the guy stopped hanging out with me.

Innocence is a funny thing. The word may describe the look in the eyes of a fawn, or it may describe what President Donald Trump can call himself now that all the evidence is gone.

Epstein's client list. Epstein's flight logs.

Princes were on it. Bill Clinton was on it. Rich guys, liberal politicians, even a bunch of sexually indecisive freak jobs from Hollywood.

Trump wasn't on the list. If there was anything Trump hated, it was a "skinner," as they say in prison, which means a guy who goes after kids.

You used to see it on Facebook.

"Pray for Donald Trump," the post would say. "He's fighting an evil worse than you can imagine."

Above that would be a picture of Trump kneeling with Jesus standing behind him. Jesus would have his hand on Trump's shoulder and Trump's head would be bowed as if in prayer.

There wouldn't be a 13-year-old girl in the picture.

That may have been an error. There may have been a lot of 13-year-old girls in the picture and on the plane and in the pool and in the hot tub.

But the White House said they had the client list, but now they don't, and the flight logs didn't stick around either, and Jeffrey Epstein really did kill himself.

The whole thing really is a stunning reversal of several dearly held conspiracy theories and leaves millions of Americans with nothing but the International Zionist Conspiracy, the gay agenda and the deadly effects of the COVID vaccines.

That's a huge loss for people whose primary sources of information are right-wing talk radio and the Book of Revelations.

Still, if you spin this the way my Kansas City buddy did, Trump is innocent. When the evidence they said they had they don't have at all, that's innocence, right? There's jail, and there's no jail. Nothing else counts.

They ought to have another parade to celebrate Trump's innocence. Get a lot of junior high cheerleaders to march, maybe some baton-twirling girl who's so young she's not even allowed to drink soda with caffeine. Call it the "Innocence Day Parade," and don't cry when you say that, either.

Get some underage gymnasts in the parade, maybe some Girl Scouts, and a lot of girls in those Catholic schoolgirl uniforms with the plaid skirts and the white knee socks.

Like the old-time criminals used to say, "Nobody talks. Everybody walks."

To find out more about Marc Dion, and read words by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle and iBooks.