Neilson will conduct evidence gathering on Wednesday — the day after the election — on Franken’s claim that a non-partisan watchdog group called Coleman the “fourth most corrupt Senator according to a bipartisan watchdog group.”

The Franken campaign contends that the Coleman lawsuit is a distraction from a lawsuit filed last Monday alleging that Coleman friend Nassar Kazeminy asked a business partner to funnel money to Coleman and his wife through her job at a Minnesota insurance agency.

Touting Judge Neilson’s decision Monday, Franken spokesperson Andy Barr said, “We always thought Senator Coleman’s lawsuit was a smokescreen to divert attention from the sworn affidavit in Texas that Norm Coleman’s close friend Nasser Kazeminy conspired to funnel $100,000 to Senator Coleman. The smoke is starting to clear.”

The hottest Senate race in the country is getting a whole lot hotter due to multiple lawsuits alleging that an associate of Sen. Norm Coleman, Nasser Kazeminy, funneled money to Coleman’s wife through an insurance company she works for. The allegations spurred the Coleman campaign to cry foul and attack Al Franken in an ad released Saturday. Now Franken has produced his own response ad.

Coleman’s ad, featured at MnIndy here, charges that Franken knew of the lawsuit: “Al Franken’s 11th-hour attack: phony accusations filled with lies, delivered anonymously to a Minnesota paper before being filed in a Texas court. A vicious personal attack on my wife. This time Al Franken’s crossed the line.”

The Franken campaign had been relatively silent about the lawsuit since it first made the news and denies having had any knowledge of the lawsuit prior to its filing on Monday. In fact, at least one reporter has commented that while the Franken campaign is quick to send items critical of Coleman to news outlets, the Franken campaign was mum as the story broke. And, as MnIndy’s Steve Perry notes: Coleman likely brought up the issue several weeks ago himself.

Coleman’s ad has given Franken an opportunity to not only respond to the attack accusing Franken of promoting the lawsuit story to the press (“Norm Coleman is looking you in the eye – and lying,” he says), but also allows Franken to directly air the allegations in his ad without the impression that Franken is peddling the controversy. Coleman broke the ice, after all, with a very direct accusation against Franken regarding the lawsuit. To date, Coleman has not produced any evidence that Franken knew of the lawsuit before it was filed.