Fbi

Brandon Darby, a Texas activist who it turns out was working for the FBI as an informant from within groups that protested the 2008 Republican National Convention, pleads his case in the Pioneer Press today and in a statement he released earlier this week. He is “CHS1″ (Confidential Human Source 1) in an FBI affidavit [...]

Had state Sen. Kathy Sheran’s bill to reform absentee voting dodged Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto pen last year, it might have spared Minnesota at least some of the agony of the current statewide recount. Sheran has denied foreknowledge that the outcome of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race this year would hang on absentee ballots. Now she tells the Minnesota Independent that her reform effort also wasn’t inspired by a recount involving a contested absentee ballot in her first race 24 years ago. That story is told in government meeting minutes that are — amazingly — available online going back more than 50 years at the City of Mankato Web site. But proximity to the state’s most dramatic recounts seems to run in the family for Sheran, whose father was a longtime justice on the state Supreme Court.

I was killing time on a back bench of an 8th floor Ramsey County courtroom Wednesday, waiting with about 50 others for something to happen (all the action in the RNC8 case that day took place behind closed doors, as it turned out), when a person with a familiar face took a seat in the next row. Could it be Coleen Rowley, famed FBI whistleblower, TIME magazine 2002 person of the year and the DFL Party’s 2006 candidate in Minnesota’s Second Congressional District? Indeed it was.

CNN is reporting that Sen. Norm Coleman has hired Minneapolis-based defense attorney Douglas Kelley to help with two lawsuits that include allegations about Coleman and wealthy donor and friend Nasser Kazeminy. The Star Tribune reports Coleman’s wife, her employer Jim Hays and Kazeminy have all hired attorneys (with Kelley, the paper calls them “four of [...]

Fox 9’s Tom Lyden’s reports that U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman and his wife Laurie were in the midst of a major home remodeling project in the spring of 2007, at the same time that a Texas firm controlled by Coleman benefactor Nasser Kazeminy was making payments to the insurance firm where Laurie Coleman works. So there is a circumstantial link between the payments and the house costs — and a potential motive for Kazeminy to steer a sum like that to the Colemans, as two lawsuits allege and the FBI is now looking into.

If anyone took it seriously when an unnamed U.S. senator floated the name of his senate colleague Norm Coleman as a prospective chair of the Republican National Committee in The Washington Times three weeks ago, they likely aren’t anymore. And not because of the ongoing recount in the election for his Senate seat, which was seen as hampering [...]

Rod Blagojevich was arrested today on charges that included alleged schemes to funnel money to the Illinois governor through his wife, Patricia. Because the charges against Blagojevich are criminal and made by the U.S. Department of Justice, they are on a wholly different order (at least so far, pending results of a newly reported FBI probe) from allegations about U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman that were made by private plaintiffs in a pair of Texas civil suits from October.

The dissimilarity, however, ends there.

A pair of men have been arrested in the Denver metro area after one of them was found to have methamphetamine and numerous guns, including a “sniper rifle,” during a routine traffic stop in Aurora, Colorado. The Secret Service, ATF, and local US Attorney’s office are investigating. Ernest Luning has more details at our sister [...]

While 33 robberies in the metro area since January might seem like a lot compared with some previous years, the statistic “isn’t alarming,” according to FBI spokesperson Paul McCabe. If robberies continue at their current pace, the year’s tally will be in line with those of previous years. In 2007, the metro area saw 70 [...]

Neither the FBI nor the Muslim community denies that they had a rocky relationship that reached climax in the wake of 9/11. But now, both sides express enthusiasm for a new advisory group that hopes to put the past behind and look toward a brighter future.

Still to be officially named, the new group comprises of [...]