Coleman attorney Fritz Knaak expressed confidence that state and federal law enforcement agencies “will get to the bottom of this.” But Knaak conceded that “we are deeply concerned about what this means to our relations with our supporters.”

Coleman and Knaak made the comments to reporters outside the Minnesota Senate election contest trial in St. Paul, which is nearing its end after nearly two months.

“We became aware of the fact that someone had tried to access the server” more than a month ago, Knaak said. But after what he termed a “very thorough” forensic investigation, the campaign decided “there had not been a compromise of the data at that time.”

The campaign learned of the breach from donors on Tuesday night. “Obviously we are going to have to review … the process,” Knaak said, adding, “The system is secure.”

Video of the full statements to reporters by Coleman and Knaak is available at the UpTake.

Marty Owings of KFAI-FM contributed to this report.

COLEMAN FOR SENATE STATEMENT ON STOLEN DONOR AND SUPPORTER DATA

The following statement was released by Coleman for Senate Legal Counsel, Fritz Knaak:

Last evening, we began to receive emails and phone calls from individuals who indicated they have been contacted, via email, by the email address: press-office@wikileaks.org.

The email stated that this organization was in possession of confidential and private information concerning the person’s financial data that we suspect may have been obtained through a breach of the Coleman for Senate Website.

We immediately contacted federal law enforcement authorities who have initiated an investigation into this matter. In addition, at approximately 8:10 a.m. this morning, we sent an email to those donors and supporters we believe may have been affected by this breach.

It is our intention to pursue all legal options available to us to identify who is in possession of this confidential information, how they obtained it and to do what we can legally do to prevent them from distributing it;

Let me be perfectly clear: We believe a federal crime has been committed. This information has been stolen. And, stealing private, confidential information is illegal.

We intend to fully pursue all legal options available, working with all appropriate local, state and federal authorities to identify the criminals who stole this information and to seek the most severe punishment available for their crimes.

When this individual or individuals are located, we intend to see they are prosecuted. That they are convicted. And that they spend as much time behind bars as is allowed by law.

At this time it appears that several thousand donors may have had their credit card information compromised. To what end, and for what purpose, that we do not know. If any individual used a credit card to make an online contribution to the Coleman for Senate Campaign, we urge them to contact their credit card company and cancel that credit card;

As you may recall, in late January our Coleman for Senate website crashed due to heavy volume, raising concerns as to whether the site had been compromised.

At that time we contacted federal law enforcement authorities who immediately began investigating this matter in conjunction with our vendors who ran our website.

At the conclusion of the law enforcement authorities’ initial investigation, they could not provide us with any evidence that such accusations were accurate — in other words, based on their initial review of our server, they did not discover that any individual had been able to obtain confidential, personal financial information.

As you might expect, this investigation is ongoing — and with this latest incident, the investigation will likely go to a new level of urgency.

The purpose or motive behind this attack is not clear. However, as we are engaged in a critical legal contest in the Minnesota courts that has a national impact on the make-up of the United States Senate, it should be abundantly obvious that this situation is extremely serious.

We are reviewing all potential and motives behind this attack, and we will not cease in our efforts to keep our supporters and donors informed of this situation. Their privacy and confidentiality is of utmost importance to us and this campaign. And, we intend to use all legal means at our disposal to protect them, and to bring these individuals who have committed this act to justice.

Franken’s team was trying to show that Gelbmann — who ran a statewide U.S. Senate campaign for Democrat Mark Dayton and then ran his local office after his election —  could conduct his duties without partisanship.

Acknowledging his feelings towards Franken and Coleman in open court seems like it would have helped make that argument. Gelbmann told the South Washington County Bullentin in a Jan. 22 article:

I was disgusted with the campaigns by both candidates. I couldn’t stomach the negative ads, which were way out for Minnesota standards.

Smaller newspapers are turning up intriguing bits to some of the second-tier stars of the Minnesota Senate election drama. Yesterday another suburban newspaper carried a profile of Coleman attorney Fritz Knaak in which he made (passing) reference to a (conjectural) Coleman concession and offered other insights into the Republican’s legal squadron.

The story comes as media outlets near and far (one of each, actually) issue calls for Coleman to concede. Knaak’s comments to the White Bear Press echo statements early this month in which he seemed to dangle the chance that Coleman might quit the contest.

In contrast to Knaak’s concession talk, White Bear Press Regional Editor Mark Nicklawske interprets a Coleman camp style point as a sign that the former Republican senator’s supporters are in it for the long haul:

Knaak and his colleagues were issued gray fleece sweaters with the words “Coleman Recount Team” embroidered on the chest. The sweaters look warm and comfortable, good for a long Minnesota winter.

Looking back, it’s clearly been a long haul already. Jan. 17–18 was only Knaak’s second weekend off in two months, taxing his ability to find time for his regular clients or family — though he makes regular visits to his mother, Dee Knaak (who, like her son, is a former state senator).

Knaak expresses satisfaction with his often high-visibility role, even as he appears to be eclipsed by the star power of new legal-team member, Joe Friedberg. And he doesn’t toe the (subsequently decided-upon?) party line that the trial will be boring:

“It’ll be very dramatic,” said Knaak. “I’ve got a very good relationship with the press and I’m still the explainer on a lot of these things, but we’re trying to keep the focus on the litigation part of it right now. I’m anticipating that you’ll be seeing a lot more of (Friedberg) than me.”

The lawyers estimate that the court would find more than half the 12,000 had been wrongly rejected. And unlike the rejected ballots that favored Franken, the Coleman forces say these 6,000 or so ballots would be more evenly distributed among the candidates.

Compared with Franken’s forces, the lawyers in Coleman’s camp are late converts to the belief that a plenitude of rejected absentee ballots in Minnesota’s Senate election need to be reviewed. Yet their new-found ardor is arguably twice as strong as their rivals’ — they want the court to review ballots that election officials have by now twice rejected:

[W]e intend to vigorously … request that the 3-judge panel allow for the possibility that the roughly 12,000 rejected absentee ballots be opened.

That’s from a statement on Coleman’s campaign Web site, in which attorney Fritz Knaak openly baits the Franken campaign and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to challenge Coleman’s blanket request to review every rejected absentee ballot:

We expect that Minnesotans will share the same stunned disappointment we do to learn that the Franken campaign may actually oppose this fundamental act of fairness.

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has expressed dismay over the number of rejected absentee ballots in the election, and the state Legislature has taken up the issue for possible reforms this session.

Read Knaak’s full statement and the entire e-mail after the jump.

Here is the full statement Coleman attorney Fritz Knaak gave to reporters late this afternoon (go to MPR’s Polinaut blog to hear the rest of the nine-minute phone-in press conference):

We thought that we’d seen the epitome of arrogance yesterday, but today Al Franken has topped even himself. In the wake of the immediate denial of yesterday’s publicity stunt, calling on the governor and the Secretary of State to issue Franken a certificate — he didn’t win then and he hasn’t won now — today he’s asking to go above the laws of our state with his latest move. Al Franken knows he can’t win in court abiding by the rules of Minnesota elections. So he’s coming up with every desperate move he can — and his Washington legal team as well — to take this out of the hands of the law here and not to have to go to trial against our election contest. Franken knows the case made in our election contest is strong. Double-counted votes, newly discovered ballots, missing ballots, and inconsistent standards regarding rejected absentee ballots are serious issues that will get their day in court. Al Franken wants his Democratic supporters in the U.S. Senate to seat him in a blatant political power play. The people of Minnesota and the votes cast by 3 million Minnesotans in this election deserve better than that. Minnesotans cast their votes. And when this election contest phase is complete, we have every hope and expectation they can be confident in the result as they send Sen. Norm Coleman back to work for them.

And here is the text of an e-mail that went out early this evening:

From: Team Coleman
Date: Tue, Jan 13, 2009
Subject: Breaking News

Dear Friend,

After weeks of running roughshod over the constitution [sic] and denying the most basic of protections to voters, yesterday Al Franken asked the state of Minnesota to certify him as the winner of the election for U.S. Senate — even though state law expressly prohibits it until the contest is resolved! And when both Governor Pawlenty and the Democrat Secretary of State immediately turned down his request, Franken filed a petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court!

If you ask me, that’s a bit like a bank robber stopping on his way out the door to ask the teller for a receipt.

Nonetheless, the outcome of our contest is far from over, and we won’t rest until every vote has been counted fairly and honestly.  As it stands right now, more than 25 precincts have had more ballots cast than they have voters! And thousands of likely votes for Norm have been challenged and thrown out at the urging of Franken’s legal team!!

Click here now to help us prevent more legal shenanigans by Franken and his army of lawyers. Your immediate contribution of $20, $25, $35, $50, $100 or more will help us stop their mischievous actions and protect the sanctity of your vote.

Thanks for all you’ve done for Norm — and will hopefully continue to do for him — as we wage this battle to prevent Al Franken from ignoring the will of Minnesotans and the laws of the state.

Sincerely,

Cullen Sheehan, Campaign Manager

P.S.    Please don’t set this e-mail aside with the best of intentions. Help us stop Al Franken from denying Minnesotans a fair election!

Paid for by Coleman for Senate ’08
www.ColemanforSenate.com

Contributions to Coleman for Senate 08 are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes. Contributions from corporations, foreign nationals and federal government contractors are prohibited. Not printed at government expense. Federal law requires us to use our best efforts to collect and report the name, mailing address, occupation and name of employer of individuals whose contributions exceed $200 in an election cycle.

“I’ve had better days,” Knaak conceded. “The numbers are what they are.” But he repeated that the “process was broken” and predicted that “the election will still be called in Coleman’s favor.”

That will happen, Coleman attorney Tony Trimble said, when hundreds of absentee ballots that the campaign still wants reviewed are opened and counted. “We’re still trying to ferret out for counting these 600 ballots,” he said, adding that fixing more than 100 allegedly double-counted ballots in Minneapolis would help Coleman as well.

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said he expected that the State Canvassing Board would declare a result of the election on Monday — a result that seems all but certain to favor Franken.

“I’m also not happy that the two campaigns had the right to veto” once-rejected absentee ballots that local officials, on review, determined should be counted — referring to a controversial Dec. 18 state Supreme Court ruling that only absentee ballots that election officials and campaign representatives could agree upon should be counted.

The Minnesota Supreme Court will not wade into the murky issue of allegedly double-counted ballots in the U.S. Senate contest. Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign believes that in some instances both duplicate and original ballots were mistakenly included in the statewide manual recount. It had asked the state’s top court to prohibit the canvassing board from certifying any election results until the issue is resolved.

But a unanimous Supreme Court ruled today that it doesn’t have sufficient information to get involved in the matter. “We do not and cannot decide that question based on the record presented in this abbreviated proceeding,” Justice Alan Page wrote in his opinion for the court.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the issue of double-counted ballots is dead. More than likely it will now be contested in district court, where there would be an opportunity for both sides to present evidence and testimony on the matter. Coleman attorney Fritz Knaak told Minnesota Public Radio’s Tom Scheck today that the decision “virtually guarantees that this will be decided in an election contest.”

The Franken campaign, not surprisingly, hailed the Supreme Court’s action. “Minnesotans have waited a long time to find out who won this race,” communications director Andy Barr said in a statement, “and today’s unanimous ruling means that the process can move forward despite attempts to halt its progress and cast doubt on the result.”

In a related matter the Supreme Court also extended the deadline for local election officials to identify wrongfully rejected absentee ballots. The justices originally ordered county canvassing boards to certify adjusted tallies that included such ballots by the end of the calendar year. Under today’s order they are now required to identify any mistakenly rejected absentee ballots and deliver them to the Secretary of State’s office by January 2. The state’s top election official will then have two days to tabulate the ballots.

The canvassing board is slated to meet on January 5 and 6. Theoretically it could (finally) certify a winner at that time.

Minnesota media mostly keep those two straight, but even locals find the profusion of Scandinavian surnames in the various recount venues vexing. Typical is KARE-11′s recent confusion of Roger Magnuson, an attorney who makes Coleman’s recount arguments before the state Supreme Court, with Eric Magnuson, the Supreme Court’s chief justice who doesn’t hear such cases due to his current service on the State Canvassing Board. (To make matters worse, there’s also a U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson in Minnesota.)

And don’t even get started with another name that’s so common and so golden in Minnesota politics that it’s inspired a term –”The Anderson Effect” — to describe the often ill-informed preference voters give to candidates who bear it.

You can look in any political direction in Minnesota and find an Anderson. The last major recount in Minnesota 46 years ago involved Gov. Elmer L. Andersen (slight spelling variant there). The last non-Jewish major-party candidate (as it happens) for the U.S. Senate seat that’s now under recount was Joan Anderson Growe in 1984 (the others, all Jews, being senators Rudy Boschwitz, the late Paul Wellstone and Coleman). And this year an unknown Independence Party candidate named Bob Anderson drew a whopping 10 percent of the vote, possibly helping an embattled incumbent U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann win re-election in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District.

And sure enough, there’s a pair of Andersons on the Minnesota Supreme Court: Paul and G. Barry. The latter has recused himself from the courtroom for recount matters while he serves in the recount effort as an appointed member of the State Canvassing Board, just like his colleague Eric Magnuson — who was himself appointed this year to be chief justice after the retirement of a man who spent more than a quarter century on the state’s highest bench … a man by the name of (you guessed it) Anderson.

On a day like today when both the state Supreme Court and the State Canvassing Board are in action, and Scandinavian names are flying through rarefied air in the halls of power like so many potato pancakes, Minnesota needs to consult its most time-honored pair of experts in the Abbott and Costello vein: Sven and Ole.

SVEN: Oy, Ole, this recount is taking longer than lutefisk. Who’s deciding this here thing then?

OLE: Minnesota State Canvassing Board, they say.

SVEN: Who’s on that?

OLE: Well, there’s Magnuson and Anderson…

SVEN: OK, Magnuson and Anderson are canvassers.

OLE: No, Magnuson and Anderson are justices on the Minnesota Supreme Court.

SVEN: You said Magnuson and Anderson are on the State Canvassing Board!

OLE: Yah, for the recount they are but then they go back to being on the Supreme Court.

SVEN: So who’s on the Supreme Court while Magnuson and Anderson are doing the recount?

OLE: Well, there’s Anderson …

SVEN: But you said Anderson’s on the canvassing board!

OLE: That’s the other Anderson.

SVEN: So there’s still an Anderson on the Supreme Court?

OLE: Yah, he told Norm Coleman’s attorney, “This is not Florida.”

SVEN: “This is not Florida?” Well, who said it was?

OLE: Was what?

SVEN: Florida!

OLE: Magnuson said it was.

SVEN: Magnuson at the canvassing board said this is Florida?

OLE: No, Magnuson at the Supreme Court.

SVEN: There’s another Magnuson at the Supreme Court?

OLE: Roger.

Day four at the canvassing board: Secretary of State Mark Ritchie

Shortly after the state canvassing board reconvened this morning, Al Franken moved into the lead for the first time during the U.S. Senate recount. The Democrat’s lead grew to more than 250 votes by the time the five-member panel broke for lunch, and it should continue increasing throughout the day. The canvassing board is scrutinizing ballots challenged by Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign and is expected to conclude the process today.

Franken’s emergence as the frontrunner comes with a number of caveats. Most notably, the running tally does not include ballot challenges that have been withdrawn by the two campaigns. Since the Democrat’s camp has withdrawn a greater number of disputed ballots, it’s likely that the Republican will benefit disproportionately when they’re added to the tally.

What’s more, the Coleman campaign returned to the Minnesota Supreme Court this morning over the issue of potentially double-counted ballots. The Republican’s camp has argued that in some cases (roughly 150 total) both original and duplicate ballots have been mistakenly included in the tally and wants the court to enjoin the canvassing board from certifying the election results until the issue is resolved. At least one local election official, Cindy Reichert of Minneapolis, seems to agree that double-counting may have occurred. The Franken campaign maintains it’s not an issue. The canvassing board voted unanimously this morning not to get involved in the matter, prompting the Coleman campaign to seek redress in the courts.

“We are disappointed the Franken Campaign would not join us in finding a resolution to this serious problem,” said Fritz Knaak, an attorney for the Coleman campaign, in a statement. “Unfortunately, without that resolution, the State Canvassing Board has made it clear they will have to count some Minnesotans’ votes twice. This means that millions of other Minnesota voters are being disenfranchised by the influence of hundreds of duplicate ballots that simply should not be counted.”

The Franken campaign countered with a statement of its own. “This is just the latest desperate act by a campaign panicked because it has suddenly realized that it is going to lose the election,” said communications director Andy Barr.