Cullen Sheehan

Lawyers for Al Franken are trying to turn Norm Coleman’s recent media blitz into a justice blitz, using comments from the Republican campaign in news reports to persuade the the Minnesota Supreme Court to speed up Coleman’s appeal.

UPDATED: Former Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign Web site is down, and the campaign explains that it was “inundated by tens of thousands of hits” by visitors seeking details on “Al Franken’s efforts to disenfranchise thousands of Minnesota voters.” But liberal blogger and IT manager Aaron Landry doesn’t buy it. His conclusion: “This stunt is a completely fabricated lie.”

What will happen to absentee ballots that were rejected as invalid by local election officials? That’s the question currently roiling the U.S. Senate contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken as a state-mandated manual recount gets underway this week.

In a fundraising email to supporters today, Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign declared victory — even though the vote tally from the Nov. 4 election won’t be certified by the state Canvassing Board until Tuesday night. The email, signed by Coleman spokesman Cullen Sheehan, says, “We won the closest Senate race in Minnesota history, but the race is far from over. Act right now” — that is, give money or volunteer to help in the upcoming recount — “and help us protect that victory.” Read it after the jump.

Heard beneath Friday’s hubbub over the vote count in Mountain Iron, Minn., was the advancement of a related Republican argument — that by offering reasons why a recount in the U.S. Senate election should go forward Democrats are insulting Minnesota’s election system and its election officials. What was implicit in U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s remarks Nov. 5, prominent Republican commentator Sarah Janecek made explicit Nov. 7, first by writing that when Democrats say they want to “ensure votes properly cast are properly counted,” they’re really out to “smear our elections process.” Later, she told a public television audience, “I’m pretty sickened by that.” In the meantime, Coleman’s campaign manager applied words like “dubious” and “tainted” to the current canvassing process.

Sen. Norm Coleman is filing a lawsuit today with the Minnesota Office of Administrative Hearings charging Al Franken’s campaign with deliberately lying about his record and residence in Washington. “Sen. Coleman is being falsely attacked,” spokesman Mark Drake said at a press conference this morning. “These are flat out falsehoods. This goes beyond the typical tit for tat you see in campaigns.”

Sen. Norm Coleman refuses to acknowledge whether or not campaign donor Nasser Kazeminy paid for very expensive suits for Coleman at Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis. Ken Silverstein, the ace investigative reporter at Harper’s magazine, started the fuss a couple of days ago when he reported that two independent sources told him that Kazeminy had bought [...]