On Thursday, the state attorney assigned to decide whether Attorney General Pam Bondi did anything wrong when she asked for and accepted $25,000 in campaign cash from Donald Trump — after her office had been asked to investigate Trump University — declared that he found no evidence to say she did.

Of course, there wasn’t much evidence the prosecutor actually looked for evidence either.

In a five-page report, Fort Myers State Attorney Stephen Russell’s office does not cite a single interview his office conducted in the course of reviewing this case.

Nor does it reveal any new evidence the media hadn’t already reported.

Not only that — and this part is key — Russell’s investigation actually ignored key evidence that had already been unearthed.

(I have made a request for any records associated with any interviews, in the case any were conducted and not cited in the report. If they provide any, I’ll report back.)

Instead, Russell’s report seems to try to substantiate a claim that Bondi has made before — that she didn’t know her office had received complaints about Trump U when she requested and took campaign money from Donald Trump.

As evidence of Bondi’s professed ignorance, the report — authored by Assistant Chief State Attorney Amira Fox — stresses that Trump wrote his check to Bondi before news media (the Orlando Sentinel) reported that Bondi’s office had been asked to investigate Trump U.

Fox writes: “It is important to note that the contribution check was dated September 9, 2013, or prior to the first news reporting [on September 13].”

This is a point Bondi has tried to stress as well — suggesting she couldn’t have possibly known her office had been asked to probe Trump University when she took the money because the media hadn’t yet reported (what was going on in her own office).

That claim strains credibility.

Not only had complaints against Trump University been filed with Bondi’s office and the previous administration’s office over the course of three years, from 2008 to 2011 — but Bondi’s top staff had been discussing them all just two weeks before Bondi took Trump’s money.

I know this because, unlike what it appears Russell’s office did, I actually pored through thousands of pages of documents — 8,491 pages worth, to be precise.

In doing so, I found dozens of emails from Bondi’s top staffers discussing the Trump accusations before the check was cut.

In a chain of emails from late August, at least nine of Bondi’s top staffers — including her chief of staff and deputy attorney general — discussed the Trump complaints.

The string of emails actually had the subject line: "Press Inquiry from 8/29/13 - Trump."

At one point, one of Bondi’s chief investigators noted that questions about Trump University were "getting a lot of national coverage in the media."

This is the topic Bondi says she was unaware of.

Two weeks after all those emails about the complaints, Trump cut the $25,000 check to Bondi’s political committee from his charitable foundation (which was a violation of IRS rules, netting Trump a $2,500 penalty). Bondi’s political committee cashed it shortly after that. And after that, Bondi’s office decided not to purse the complaints against Trump U.

Meanwhile, New York’s attorney general pursued similar complaints in his state — and netted a $25 million settlement for his constituents and clients.

All of the information about Bondi’s staff discussing the Trump U complaints well before the check was written has been published.

So with all of that, we are left with one of two conclusions:

Either Russell’s office didn’t do enough research to find the emails that showed Bondi’s top staffers discussing the Trump case before the check was cut and cashed.

Or they did find it — and chose not to include that detail. (And presumably bought the argument that Bondi didn’t have a clue about the issue that virtually all of her top lieutenants were working on — the one that staffers said was “getting a lot of national coverage.” )

To be honest, I didn’t really expect this to be a very serious or thorough investigation.

But I did think those conducting it would at least endeavor to make it look that way.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com