Photo: Chris Steller, MnIndy

Has Dave Durenberger gone politically tone-deaf? The former Republican senator-turned-health-care blogger started off his scoop about another new gig for Norm Coleman with two scandal-tinged words that Coleman thought he’d put behind him: “Texas money.”

That phrase, for anyone who followed Coleman’s fortunes over the last year, carries seedy resonances thanks to allegations in a civil lawsuit that businessman Nasser Kazeminy funneled Coleman $75,000 via a company he controls in Texas.

Coleman denied it and wasn’t named in the suit; the plaintiffs claimed they weren’t even interested in whether he’d actually seen any of the cash. When a judge deep-sixed the suit this month, Coleman danced on its grave: “Now the suit goes away and I’m glad it has.”

This new “Texas money,” as Eric Black has fleshed out at MinnPost, comes by way of Bush I pal Fred Malek, the man putting together a new think tank called America’s Action Network, with Coleman at its helm. It’s separate from the Harvard University post CNN reported yesterday, and from the Republican Jewish Coalition gig Coleman took partway through his recount battle with now-Sen. Al Franken.

Here’s what Durenberger wrote on Wednesday:

Texas money is also funding a start-up non-profit called America’s Action Network, which is designed to give definition to a principled “role of government” approach to the Republican Party’s future. In the process, its founders hope to leave some of the “other issues” like those which firmed “the base” in the social values arena behind. New president of the right-of-center group will be former Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman.

The think tank is so new, Google hasn’t heard of it, except for a flurry of Coleman-related news buzz:

Coleman got the minimum number of commissioners needed (four of six) to side with the more lenient of two draft advisory opinions released last week. One of the dissenters was Cynthia Bauerly, a recent addition who hails from Minnesota.

After promising to do so last December, Coleman finally requested an advisory opinion from the FEC about whether his campaign could pay for expenses arising from several lawsuits and ethics complaints. In civil suits filed in Texas and Delaware, Coleman friend and donor Nasser Kazeminy was accused of secretly funneling money to Coleman via a business transaction. Other complaints charged Coleman with accepting unreported gifts.

FEC spokespersons told the Minnesota Independent that — with the exception of one footnote-tweak regarding funds raised since the election — the commission adopted as its final opinion the language of Draft B, which states:

For the reasons discussed below, the Commission concludes that the Committee may use campaign funds to pay for the following legal services: reviewing the complaints to the Senate Ethics Committee; reviewing ABM’s letter to the FBI; representing Senator Coleman in an FBI investigation of alleged violations of Federal law or rules governing the office of a Senator or the conduct of campaigns; monitoring and representing Senator Coleman in the Texas and Delaware lawsuits; and responding to media inquiries.

The Committee may not, however, use campaign funds to pay for legal services representing Senator Coleman in an FBI investigation of allegations unrelated to Senator Coleman’s campaign or duties as a Federal officeholder.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington slammed the FEC for shrinking from applying federal election law to Coleman’s question and for ignoring CREW’s arguments submitted via the public comment process.

CREW did however applaud one aspect of the opinion: that, in CREW’s view anyway, the FEC was telling Coleman he can’t use funds raised for his post-election recount activities to cover outside lawsuit expenses.

But the commission seemed to go out of its way not to answer that question, re-wording a footnote to read:

This advisory opinion concerns only the use of campaign funds to pay for the requested legal fees and expenses.  Senator Coleman is involved in a continuing recount of the 2008 election. This advisory opinion should not be relied on as allowing the use of recount funds because it does not address the use of recount funds.

Coleman’s own cleverness in wording his original question to the FEC was key to his success before the FEC, CREW charged. In a statement, CREW executive director Melanie Sloan said:

To assert the Commission must put on blinders to avoid addressing any [Federal Election Campaign Act] issue other than the narrowly-tailored one raised by the requestor is irresponsible. It turns the advisory opinion process into a game whereby the requestor can obtain permission to engage in activities – and obtain immunity for doing so — by merely leaving out inconvenient facts.

Norm and Laurie Coleman (Paul Demko, Minnesota Independent)

Norm Coleman may not dip into his campaign coffers to cover all his expenses stemming from lawsuits and other complaints that allege misconduct by him or his donors. That’s the upshot of draft advisory opinions issued late Thursday (pdf) by the Federal Election Commission.

The FEC drafted two opinions to guide its consideration of Coleman’s inquiry about which legal bills federal law would let him pay with campaign funds.

Related lawsuits in Texas and Delaware contend that Coleman benefactor Nasser Kazeminy steered him $75,000 through a business relationship between a Texas firm Kazeminy controls and the St. Paul insurance firm where Coleman’s wife works. The FBI is looking into whether Kazeminy improperly paid for Coleman’s suits, an allegation that also prompted Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) to ask for a Senate ethics investigation.

Here is the question Coleman asked the FEC:

May the Committee use campaign funds to pay legal counsel for the services described above in connection with the Texas and Delaware lawsuits, the FBI investigation, and the Senate Ethics Committee complaints?

The FEC will base its decision on two draft advisory opinions that reach somewhat different conclusions.

Opinion A says the law won’t let Coleman tap campaign accounts to pay for legal representation in the Texas or Delaware lawsuits or the FBI investigation, but the campaign can pay half the costs of monitoring the out-of-state lawsuits.

Opinion B says the law disallows only spending campaign funds for the FBI investigation into matters unrelated to his candidacy or elective office.

At their June 25 meeting, the commissioners will try to reach a decision about which draft opinion, or some combination of the two, represents their understanding of how election law applies to Coleman’s situation.

Draft Advisory Opinion A:

For the reasons discussed below, the Commission concludes that the Committee may use campaign funds to pay for the following legal services: reviewing the complaints to the Senate Ethics Committee; reviewing ABM’s letter to the FBI; representing Senator Coleman in an FBI investigation of alleged violations of Federal law or rules governing the office of a Senator or the conduct of campaigns; and responding to media inquiries.

For the reasons discussed below, the Commission concludes that the Committee may not use campaign funds to pay for the following legal services: representing Senator Coleman in the Texas or Delaware lawsuits; and representing Senator Coleman in an FBI investigation of allegations unrelated to Senator Coleman’s campaign or duties as a Federal officeholder. For the reasons discussed below, the Commission concludes that the Committee may use campaign funds to pay for 50% of legal fees for monitoring the two lawsuits.

Draft Advisory Opinion B:

For the reasons discussed below, the Commission concludes that the Committee may use campaign funds to pay for the following legal services: reviewing the complaints to the Senate Ethics Committee; reviewing ABM’s letter to the FBI; representing Senator Coleman in an FBI investigation of alleged violations of Federal law or rules governing the office of a Senator or the conduct of campaigns; monitoring and representing Senator Coleman in the Texas and Delaware lawsuits; and responding to media inquiries.

The Committee may not, however, use campaign funds to pay for legal services representing Senator Coleman in an FBI investigation of allegations unrelated to Senator Coleman’s campaign or duties as a Federal officeholder.

The FEC is taking public comment on the matter until noon on June 24.

More analysis to come.

But Silverstein finds plenty to ponder when it comes to SIWP’s finances. The group has little to show for $88,000 it has spent out of the $110,000 it has raised — some $40,000 of which went to unspecified “contract labor” from 2002 to 2004.

Goodman and Kazeminy were last linked doing good deeds after an apartment building Goodman owns burned last December. Each was reported to have put $50,000 into a fund for victims of the fire, only to have those gifts overshadowed by an anonymous $1 million donation.

But Kazeminy and Goodman won’t return Silverstein’s calls about SIWP, so his questions about where the group’s money went may stay unanswered unless the Internal Revenue Service investigates, finds fault and makes an enforcement action public. Silverstein concludes:

… the foundation has raised and spent about $100,000 but has done, as far as I can tell, virtually nothing to honor the victims of 9/11 or to “remind the world…that it cannot be allowed to happen again.”

So what exactly is the purpose of this IRS-approved non-profit organization?

Photo: Lauren Victoria Burke, WDCpix.com

A clothes-shopping spree that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin started in Minnesota didn’t break the law, in the opinion of the Federal Election Commission, even though it was paid for by the GOP.

Palin dropped $75,062 at Minneapolis’ Neiman-Marcus store while in Minnesota to accept the vice presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention. She went on to run up an apparel tab that exceeded $150,000.

A complaint (pdf) filed last year by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked the FEC to find that Palin’s purchases violated rules against using campaign donations on candidates’ personal attire.

The commission decided today that that restriction doesn’t apply to party funds (pdf).

Also named in CREW’s clothes complaint, as an agent of the Republican National Committee, was Jeff Larson. He’s also figured in a separate Minnesota-related scandal, as the lenient landlord who cheaply rented a basement room in Washington, D.C., to former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman.

Coleman’s own wardrobe procurement, allegedly using unreported cash assistance from friend Nasser Kazeminy, is the subject of yet another scandal, now said to be under investigation by the FBI.

Coleman has asked the FEC for an opinion as to whether federal law lets him tap his campaign accounts to cover legal expenses in a pair of civil lawsuits that allege a friend, campaign donor Nasser Kazeminy, funneled his family an unreported $75,000.

In its argument (pdf) CREW cites past FEC opinions, including one that refused to approve the use of campaign funds to pay U.S. Sen. David Vitter’s lawyers for their efforts to repel a subpoena that would require him to testify in a criminal proceeding.

CREW asserts that it would be unprecedented for the FEC to allow Coleman to pay lawyers before he has even been asked to testify:

Indeed, the Commission has never allowed a candidate/officeholder to use campaign funds to pay such legal fees before the candidate/office holder’s testimony was compelled or actually given.

At a minimum, CREW asks the FEC to deny Coleman approval for spending money from his recount committee’s account on lawsuits unrelated to the recount.  In an opinion sought be Coleman’s Democratic rival, Al Franken, commissioners ruled that recount funds may only be spent on recount-related expenses.

CREW notes that Coleman has shifted more than $300,000 from the Coleman Minnesota Recount Committee to the Coleman for Senate ’08 account and speculates that the latter account may be mostly made up of funds from the former at this point.

Interestingly, CREW cites Coleman’s request to the FEC as having been filed April 3, the date that appears on his letter requesting an advisory opinion — rather than May 12, the date on which the FEC posted Coleman’s request on its website.

The FEC is required to reply within 60 days to a request from a candidate or office-holder. Were the FEC to start its clock at the date CREW cites, commissioners would have to issue a ruling within days of oral arguments in Coleman’s election-contest appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court set for June 1.

Coleman’s campaign said back-and-forth with the FEC over paperwork delayed a request he promised to make in December.

CREW filed a complaint with the Senate ethics committee last summer after revelations that Kazeminy paid for Coleman’s suits. The former senator’s request also asked the FEC to rule on whether he could spend campaign money on expenses related to that complaint.

Coleman received a “dishonorable mention” on CREW’s list of the most corrupt members of Congress last year.

CREW has also been a fierce critic of the FEC and its commissioners, urging President Obama to follow through on campaign promises to reform the agency.

The interview happened “recently,” Sam Stein reports. The story is the first news of FBI investigations into Coleman’s affairs taking place in Minnesota.

It’s also the first resurfacing in months of allegations that Coleman’s friend and benefactor Nasser Kazeminy bought suits for the former Senator when he was still in office.

Coleman has denied the story, which if true would likely mean a violation of reporting rules or gift limits.

The Federal Election Commission will decide within two months whether Coleman’s campaign can pay lawyers who dealt with complaints about the allegations.

The Huffington Post’s anonymous source provided business cards left by the FBI as proof of the alleged interview and also offered other details — including that agents also asked about a different set of allegations in Texas.

In December news reports said the FBI was looking into separate charges raised in civil lawsuits filed in Texas and Delaware that Kazeminy had funneled $75,000 to Coleman via transfers from a business he controls in Texas to the St. Paul insurance firm where Coleman’s wife, Laurie, works.

The Colemans aren’t named as defendants in the lawsuits, which are mostly concerned with broader business issues having nothing to do with them.

In March the U.S. Secret Service said it was investigating a leak of private financial information, including credit card numbers, from a database of donors stored at Coleman’s campaign Web site.

Update: The Pioneer Press has now reported on the same story, independent of HuffPo, with several new details. The “main topic” of agents’ interest were suits, according to the anonymous source, who couldn’t offer them information based on direct knowledge of the matter. The interview took place within the last two weeks, the PiPress said.

Norm and Laurie Coleman (Paul Demko/Minnesota Independent)

Norm Coleman may be violating federal campaign finance laws by paying his personal legal bills with campaign funds, according to charges in a complaint filed today by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party with the Federal Elections Commission. The controversy stems from a pair of lawsuits alleging that longtime Coleman associate Nasser Kazeminy attempted to funnel $75,000 to the Republican politician while he was serving in the U.S. Senate.

A Coleman spokesman told the Star Tribune in December that the then-senator would seek a ruling from the FEC on whether it was appropriate to use campaign funds to cover his legal bills stemming from the suits. But the federal agency has no records of any such request from the Republican. Although Coleman is not a party to either of the lawsuits, he has hired attorney Doug Kelley to represent his interests.

“Mr. Coleman owes Minnesotans an explanation,” said DFL chair Brian Melendez in a statement, “both for why he is paying for his own legal problems with money that he received for entirely different purposes, and for why he hasn’t taken any steps to ensure that he is acting within the law, after promising months ago that he would seek a formal opinion.”

This is the second complaint filed with the FEC over the matter. In January, Alliance for a Better Minnesota raised similar questions about the Coleman campaign’s finances in a letter to the federal agency. The nonprofit group is yet to receive a response on the matter from the FEC.

Photo: Star Tribune video

Norm Coleman told the Star Tribune editorial board Thursday that its reporters “could have waited” until after the Nov. 4 election to ask questions about charges that businessman Nasser Kazeminy funneled him money. Instead, Coleman charged, the reporters knowingly “inserted themselves” into a DFL Party TV ad by shouting questions to him as he left an Oct. 29 campaign event (video below).

Coleman’s statement that “it could have waited until afterwards” repeats a blame-the-messenger riff he first played in a Feb. 1 interview with WCCO-TV’s Esme Murphy, when he implied the reporters’ questions cost him crucial votes: 

They could have asked those questions quietly. … They could have gone back and had a quiet conversation if that was the purpose. … That could have been a quiet story. It could have been a story that came out the day after the election. … And it’s unfortunate that those last-minute, eleventh-hour charges can have an impact on the race.

The reporters, Tony Kennedy and Paul McEnroe, shot back that they had repeatedly sought an interview with Coleman on the subject. When the campaign rebuffed those requests, Kennedy and McEnroe warned Coleman they intended to raise the issue at his Oct. 29 campaign stop in St. Cloud.

Video clips showing the reporters shouting questions to an unresponsive Coleman as he gets into a waiting car immediately appeared on the Web and soon were featured in a DFL Party TV ad.

When asked at the editorial board interview yesterday about the charges in a Texas civil lawsuit that Kazeminy ordered executives at Deep Marine Technology to send $100,000 to the St. Paul insurance firm where Coleman’s wife works, Coleman turned the question against the newspaper:

STRIB: Have you been contacted by the FBI in the Kazeminy investigation?

COLEMAN: I’ve made my point that we did nothing wrong. … I’ve made it clear that I’m just not going to comment about that. … You’ve got a business dispute between two guys who got fired and a guy who took over a company. And we’ve talked about this, and I’ll say this: You’ve got two reporters who inserted themselves into a Democrat campaign commercial four days before an election, which I found stunning.

STRIB: That’s not true, Senator. They didn’t insert themselves — they were there, they became part of that commercial, but they did not have anything to do with producing it.

COLEMAN: … That is true. … The trackers [from opposing campaigns] are there. Everything we do is tracked. So you’re telling me that two seasoned reporters who bring up an allegation four days before an election — it could have waited until afterwards — in the midst of, in front of which … the cameras weren’t hidden, were they? Were the cameras hidden?

STRIB: The reporters tried to contact you. …

COLEMAN: But get to the point of, they inserted themselves. Did they raise an allegation four days before an election in front of TV cameras that they know are filming? Is the answer to that yes or no? … You said they didn’t insert themselves. They did.

STRIB: I wouldn’t have been conscious of the cameras if it had been me and I’m guessing they weren’t either.

COLEMAN: Goodness gracious, we’re covered by cameras, OK? Then you’re thinking these guys are dumber than … OK? That’s an absurd proposition. In front of a bevy of cameras, they raised allegations of something — I’ll just end it again — no basis in fact. Not a single allegation made to date of anything done wrong by myself or my wife, because there was nothing. So I’m not going to comment on it, but I take great exception to the fact that you say two seasoned reporters didn’t insert themselves in front of cameras and the next day have a Democrat commercial running on that very issue. I take offense to that.

The Star Tribune is rolling out video and transcribed excerpts from the editorial board interview with Coleman. Video of this exchange is here. The newspaper endorsed Coleman last fall and this week ran an editorial supporting his bid to appeal a court ruling that Franken won the election to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Coleman’s charges came during a stop on what the newspaper termed a “media blitz” and “an all-out public relations campaign” that also included visits with the St. Paul Pioneer Press editorial board and interviews with several local TV stations.

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Here’s the video of the Strib reporters trying to get a comment from Coleman:

Coleman isn’t named in the lawsuit (or in a similar suit pending in Delaware), but he is implicated by charges that Kazeminy ordered officers of a business he controlled, Houston-based Deep Marine Technology, to send $100,000 to Hays Companies, the St. Paul insurance company that employs Coleman’s wife, Laurie.

The two former Deep Marine executives who brought the suit have given sworn testimony that although the payments were ostensibly for insurance advice, they don’t know of any such service being rendered. And, they claim, Kazeminy introduced his instructions by saying, “United States senators don’t make shit.”