Joseph Basel. Photo: UM - Morris

Joseph Basel. Photo: UM - Morris

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern Louisiana has confirmed what social media and all other signs strongly suggested: The Joseph Basel charged with a felony at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office is indeed from Minnesota.

Public Information Officer Kathy English didn’t have more specifics but said the fact that Basel’s home state is Minnesota came out in spoken testimony at the court hearing yesterday into federal charges against Basel, rightwing provocateur James O’Keefe and two other men.

Neither the federal criminal complaint or the FBI’s press release said where Basel comes from.

Details about Basel continue to surface:

On Facebook, he claimed to have had a date with Arianna Brown, daughter of Scott Brown, the newly elected U.S. senator from Massachusetts.

Basel managed the 2006 campaign of Republican state Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen.

There is a house owned by Joseph Basel in Morris, where Basel went to college.

Basel was a youth representative to the planning commission in Mankato, where he grew up.

A Joseph Basel of Mankato sought redress from the federal government for injury from a childhood vaccine.