Photo: Chris Steller/MnIndy

Photo: Chris Steller, MnIndy

As the Minnesota Independent reported yesterday, a business merger has scuttled a lawsuit that implicated a Norm Coleman benefactor in a money-funneling scheme. Now Coleman tells the Star Tribune he’s glad for the imminent demise of the Texas civil-court complaint that has dogged him (though it doesn’t name him) since last October. The suit, which alleges that Nasser Kazeminy sent Coleman secret cash via Coleman’s wife’s employer, “obviously” hurt him at the polls. The former senator says:

There was never, never, ever anything involved in this that had anything to do with my wife or me in terms of any monies being traded. Nothing. And yet the allegations played out and the election is over and now the suit goes away and I’m glad it has.

The Strib’s Tony Kennedy writes that FBI officials continue to refuse to comment on the bureau’s investigation into Coleman and donor Nasser Kazeminy. Few details have emerged about the investigation, but in May, the Huffington Post and the local dailies reported that agents had interviewed a Minnesotan as part of the probe.

The FBI investigation came up during my interview Tuesday with Casey Wallace, the Texas attorney who filed the suit on behalf of Paul McKim, an ex-CEO fighting with the owners of his former company, Deep Marine Technology.

Wallace generally disavows any intent or interest in the political aspects of the lawsuit, which is in large part devoted to an unrelated dispute about the handling of the business, which Kazeminy controls.

But when I asked Wallace about the future of the charges concerning Kazeminy and Coleman, now that the current lawsuit looks doomed, he mentioned the FBI investigation as one avenue, besides Deep Marine legal action, that could turn up information. Does he know of anyone who has been interviewed?

“There are people who have been interviewed” was all Wallace said he could tell me.