In a motion for an expedited schedule filed with the state’s high court Tuesday afternoon (pdf), Franken attorneys Marc Elias and David Lillehaug cite quotes from Coleman and Cullen Sheehan, a Coleman aide, that appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and MinnPost.

The quotes show the Coleman camp has already been hard at work at their appeal briefs, Franken’s motion argues, so let’s put the appeal on a fast track. But taking Coleman at his quoted words, it’s an idea he agrees with.

“We are hoping the court gives us an accelerated schedule, so we are actually working on the briefs now,” Coleman told the PiPress on April 15.

But Sheehan told MinnPost’s Eric Black a slightly different story two days later.

In the 2000 Bush v. Gore recount case, the U.S. Supreme Court only allowed a few days for briefs to be filed. The reason the campaign didn’t immediately appeal the election contest court’s April 13 decision giving Franken a 312-vote win, Sheehan told Black, was so they would have more time to work on their appeal brief — in case the accelerated court schedule his boss hoped for was too accelerated, apparently.

So the Franken campaign urges what the Coleman camp either wanted or was bracing for: a hurried schedule of filing deadlines that has the final brief arriving at the high court on May 4 — a lucky 13 days away.

“Minnesotans and folks across the country are fed up with Al Franken’s efforts to disenfranchise thousands of Minnesota voters, and the overwhelming response we received to making this information public is proof positive of that fact,” he says.

But not so fast, says Aaron Landry, an MN Publius blogger (and Franken fan) who works as IT Manager at a St. Paul design firm by day. He commented at MDE that there’s “no way that the amount of traffic they got was the cause of the website being down.”

Then he did some digging. His conclusion: “This stunt is a completely fabricated lie.“

Two of the four points Landry makes in his post:

2. Their website has been configured to point at the IP address “1.1.1.1,” which goes nowhere. This isn’t a mistake. They also set the “time to live” on that for only 600 seconds, which means when they choose to switch it back, most servers should only take 10 minutes to refresh. It’s an intentional move so they can manage their timing of the switchover. Most records like this have a much longer time to live. In short, they have configured their website to intentionally point at nothing. This does not happen by mistake and it is clear what they are doing.

[...]

4. As the Coleman for Senate website is being pointed at 1.1.1.1, which goes nowhere, they have no way of tracking how many “hits” they are getting. They had to have made up the “thousands of hits” number because it is technically impossible to track traffic they aren’t receiving.

I left messages on the office voicemail and cellphone of Coleman’s press officer, Luke Friedrich, and called and e-mailed his backup, Tom Erickson. Should they reply, I’ll post what they have to say. I’m also getting in touch with IT experts who can weigh in on Landry’s claim.

Update: Tony Webster, a Minneapolis web developer, explained to me that the IP address the Coleman campaign used prior to today’s “crash” (208.42.168.197) is responsive. Translation: “If the site was truly down, that IP wouldn’t be responsive. If it wasn’t, their story might have validity. In fact, I can see their last blog post today. The title is ‘Senate Trial: Every ballot has a story.’ If the site was down, I wouldn’t see that at all.”

He says he can also see that the campaign has a Google Analytics account.

“If they wanted to be transparent, they could release those logs and graphs,” he said. “Since it’s a third-party source, they can’t modify the data. If they changed that DNS [to 1.1.1.1] to mitigate a problem, you should see it.”

Update: I called Tim Barsness listed as the technical contact for the site. The provided phone number rang to Coleman’s campaign office; while Barsness was not available, the unidentified man who answered the phone would say little, except to inform me that the problem was being worked on as we spoke — and to correct me: “The crash happened yesterday.” That assertion sets off a red flag for Tony Webster: If that’s true, why does he see two entries dated today? He took a screen grab of how the Coleman site’s HTML displays on-screen, taken directly from the site’s server:

[click to enlarge]

Still no response to my multiple messages left with Coleman representatives at 2 pm this afternoon.

Related: ‘Crashgate’ reveals unprotected donor database on Coleman’s site

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.

The Franken campaign has sought information on rejected absentee ballots from all 87 of Minnesota’s counties. But some jurisdictions, including Ramsey and Hennepin counties, have refused to provide the data, arguing that it is private. Last Thursday the Franken campaign filed a lawsuit in Ramsey County District Court seeking to force the county to release the information. A hearing on the case is slated for Wednesday morning.

In the meantime, a statewide canvassing board, set up to oversee the recount process, is expected to consider the issue when it meets tomorrow. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who is part of the five-member panel, initially told reporters that the canvassing board would not weigh in on the issue of rejected absentee ballots, but subsequently reversed that decision.

In a brief submitted to the canvassing board today, the Franken campaign highlighted four instances where it believes absentee ballots were improperly rejected. For example, James Langland, a doctor in Pennington County, attempted to vote absentee by visiting the local election office to fill out his ballot. The ballot, however, was subsequently rejected because it lacked a proper witness signature. “Dr. Langland did everything correctly,” said Mark Elias, the lead recount attorney for the Franken campaign at a press conference today. “He actually went to the recorder’s office and asked them to witness the signature. And due surely to human error and nothing more, it resulted in it being rejected.”

It’s uncertain how many such ballots are at stake, but Hennepin County alone had 461 absentee votes invalidated. “That’s part of the problem; we are still looking for data,” said Andy Barr, Franken’s communications director. “We want to know how many absentee ballots we’re talking about and why they were rejected.”

The recount is slated to get under way on Wednesday. Over the next two weeks local election officials are expected to manually examine all 2.9 million ballots cast to determine which candidate an individual voter intended to support. Authorized representatives of the Coleman and Franken campaigns will be allowed to challenge any decision that they deem questionable. Those challenged ballots will then ultimately be ruled on by the statewide canvassing board.

Currently, Coleman holds a minuscule 206-vote lead, but that margin has already shrunk from more than 700 votes immediately after Election Day as counties have certified results and corrected errors. The shrinking gap has led the Coleman campaign to repeatedly question the integrity of the vote-counting process. Last week, for instance, campaign manager Cullen Sheehan raised doubts about the secretary of state’s ability to oversee an impartial process.

During today’s press conference, Barr noted that the state’s top Republican elected official, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, has recently acknowledged that there’s been no evidence of electoral shenanigans presented. “That begs the question,” Barr said. “If there is no actual evidence of wrongdoing or fraud in the process, as the Coleman campaign’s top surrogate says, how many more baseless charges and innuendos will we have to tolerate from the Coleman campaign? Our position, meanwhile, remains the same: count all the votes fairly.”

What was implicit in U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s remarks Wednesday, prominent Republican commentator Sarah Janecek made explicit Friday, 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.

In an article for her Politics in Minnesota Weekly Report, publisher Janecek wrote:

The outsider ethos that has plagued Al Franken since the inception of his candidacy two years ago now manifests itself in an even uglier fashion: casting doubt on Minnesota’s election process. … Franken and the DFL Party are not entitled to, at best, cast doubt on our process, or worse, create chaos. The PR and legal strategy appears to hang on “properly cast votes properly counted.”

Here Janecek cites Franken’s and five other DFLers’ use of the offending phrase, “ensure properly cast votes are properly counted.” She continues:

We’ve talked to a number of rank-and-file election judges (from both parties) this week and they feel insulted. These people volunteer their time year after year to do the Good Neighbor thing at the polls. To smear our elections process is to smear them, they believe.

Later Friday Janecek made one of her frequent appearances on TPT’s weekly “Almanac” show, where she said:

I really dread this entire process. Minnesota — highest voter turnout in the nation. We’re known for our clean elections. And you look at the rhetoric that’s coming from the Franken campaign about improper elections, improper votes cast, and it just — I’m sickened. I think in large part — Secretary Ritchie flagged this earlier — we have good people running our elections. So I’m pretty sickened by that.

This on a day when Coleman’s campaign manager, Cullen Sheehan, said in a press release:

Minnesota has a history of fair and clean elections, and we are committed to ensuring that this election is no different. That is why it is so troubling to us that …statistically dubious and improbable shifts … are overwhelmingly accruing to the benefit of Al Franken. And, as many of these unexplained and improbably vote swings are taking place on the Iron Range, we’re asking that local and state election officials provide us with the necessary data to reassure the public that the canvassing process has not been tainted.

If the Democrats’ phrase “ensure votes properly cast are properly counted” is enough to make Republicans ill, then the Coleman camp’s words — “troubling,” “dubious,” “unexplained,” “improbably” and “tainted” — must have pushed them way beyond Minute Clinic-sick.

The question is whether words — whatever their political stripe, emotional pang or medical impact — will distract Minnesotans and their public officials from seeing the electoral system through a professional and impartial recount process.

Specifically, the Coleman campaign takes issue with a pair of ads stating that the Republican has been labeled the fourth most corrupt Senator in the country and pays almost nothing in rent on his Capitol Hill apartment.

As MNPublius has pointed out, Coleman has a long history of filing similar lawsuits in the waning days of campaigns. In 1998 he filed a complaint against Skip Humphrey arguing that the Democrat had deliberately distorted Coleman’s stance on farm issues during the gubernatorial campaign. Then in 2002 he lodged similar charges against Paul Wellstone, arguing that the Senator should be criminally prosecuted for misstating the Republican’s stance on Social Security. In both instances the complaints were dropped after election day.

Drake denied, however, that the lawsuit is simply a campaign tactic. “We’re going to file it today and see where it goes,” he said. “Our plan is to see that this is dealt with.”

The claim that Coleman is the fourth-most corrupt Senator in the country is based on a list released last month by the watchdog organization Citizen’s for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Coleman is indeed one of just four Senators to make the cut. “It’s a non-partisan organization in Washington that looks out for ethics,” noted John Stiles, communications director for the DFL party, after the press conference. “And if you look on their web site you’ll see a lot of Democrats that they’ve gone after.”

In June the National Journal reported that Coleman rents a Capitol Hill apartment owned by Republican fundraising guru and longtime Coleman confidant Jeff Larson for $600 a month. Only after the National Journal began asking questions about the deal did Coleman actually make all of the monthly payments. CREW has filed an ethics complaint against the Republican charging that the arrangement is a sweetheart deal and violates the Senate’s gift ban policy.

A few additional issues that have dogged the Coleman campaign were also raised by reporters at the press conference. Yesterday it was revealed that a lawsuit was recently filed in Texas charging that the Senator’s wife, Laurie, inappropriately received $75,000 from longtime Coleman supporter Nasser Kazeminy. The money was allegedly channeled through the insurance company where she works. Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan stated that the lawsuit has been withdrawn, but it remains unclear if a settlement was reached in the matter. “I don’t know about the details of a settlement or not,” Sheehan said.

Drake also ducked a question about Coleman’s utility bills for his Washington apartment. The campaign previously promised to provide a copy of the bills to reporters in order to clear up questions about who pays for the Senator’s utilities, but has failed to follow through.

Watch the press conference here.

At a press conference Wednesday, campaign spokesman Cullen Sheehan refused to answer questions from reporters, and instead recited the line, “The senator has reported every gift he’s ever received,” 12 times in three minutes.

Transcript below the jump.

REPORTER: On a different subject, is there a reason that the senator won’t say whether or not someone else bought some suits for him?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: Rachel, the senator has reported every gift he has ever received.

REPORTER: That wasn’t my question, Cullen.

CULLEN SHEEHAN: The senator has reported every gift he has ever received. We are not going to respond to unnamed sources on a blog.

REPORTER: So Sen. Coleman’s friend has not bought these suits for him? Is that correct?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: The senator has reported every gift he has ever received.

REPORTER: Why can’t you say that? Why won’t you give us an answer yes or no on that?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: He has reported every gift he has ever received.

REPORTER: We haven’t asked whether or not he has reported every gift he has ever received and I will take your word that he has reported every gift he has received. Has he ever received a gift of suits?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: He has reported every gift he has ever received.

REPORTER: If the answer is no, why don’t you say no?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: He has reported every gift he has ever received, Rachel.

REPORTER: What about Laurie, Mrs. Coleman’s, job at Hays Companies? Do you know what she did there?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: Again, they have disclosed everything they need to disclose on the Senate ethics forms.

REPORTER: So the senator will only go according to the Senate ethics laws or rules rather than answer questions?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: He does everything he is required to do, Rachel.

REPORTER: But that’s not my question, Cullen.

CULLEN SHEEHAN: That’s my response.

REPORTER: Sen. Coleman has talked a lot about campaign finance and transparency. He’ll repeat that — transparency, transparency -– that’s what you need to have. If there are questions about whether he was a recipient of some very expensive suits and whether those they were gifted to him in an appropriate way -– why not just clear it all up because it is very unclear to us?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: He does that every year as a United States senator on the ethics disclosure forms.

REPORTER: And will we find information about clothing on those forms?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: If it exceeds a gift limit, yes.

REPORTER: So is it possible that he received these suits and they were below the gift limit?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: The senator has reported every gift he has ever received.

REPORTER: It’s a little puzzling, Cullen, why you won’t say whether or not he received these gifts and I understand that you don’t want to have respond to everything on blogs, but you’re getting questions from reporters and I don’t see why you’re not answering that. Can you explain that a little to me?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: Rachel, we are not going to respond to unnamed sources on blogs. That’s all we would do every day from now until the election is over. The senator has disclosed everything he is required to disclose and reported everything he is required to report.

REPORTER: But Cullen if the senator did nothing wrong here and that’s what you’re saying, you could just tell us that and the issue would go away.

CULLEN SHEEHAN: The senator has reported every gift he has ever received.

REPORTER: Did the senator do anything wrong here?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: The senator has done nothing wrong and has reported every gift he has ever received.

REPORTER: And you don’t know what Mrs. Coleman did for Hays Companies?

CULLEN SHEEHAN: And again, whatever has been required to be disclosed about her income and what she does has been disclosed.