Paul McEnroe

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 unreported money to the former senator. 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.

Two Star Tribune reporters have answered the charges former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman made yesterday against them. Coleman told WCCO-TV the reporters ambushed him last October with questions about alleged money funneling and implied they intended to deliver a performance before partisan cameras that would provide footage for an eleventh-hour attack ad.
Paul McEnroe and Tony Kennedy said today they [...]

An editor’s note in today’s Star Tribune is the latest sign of the newspaper’s squeamishness about its own reporting of what are now two lawsuits alleging back-channel payoffs to U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman:

EDITOR’S NOTE
The Democratic Senate [sic] Campaign Committee is running TV ads featuring a Star Tribune reporter questioning Sen. Norm Coleman about a lawsuit noted in this report. The video in the ad was filmed without the knowledge or consent of the Star Tribune.

The original video shows Strib reporter Paul McEnroe trying to ask Coleman about the first lawsuit filed in Texas this week as Coleman left a St. Cloud cafe Wednesday. (See the video here. See the DSCC’s ad after the jump.)

The figure of Nasser Kazeminy — longtime Norm Coleman friend and patron — is once again casting a shadow over the US Senate campaign. Kazeminy, the man who may or may not have purchased suits for Coleman at Neiman-Marcus once upon a time, was reportedly accused in a lawsuit filed (and withdrawn) this week of funneling money to Coleman’s wife, Laurie Coleman, through a third party.

We know this because there is videotape (published this morning at MnIndy) of Star Tribune reporter Paul McEnroe asking Coleman — or rather, the closed window of Coleman’s SUV — about it.

But whereas McEnroe and Kennedy’s previous inquiries into the Coleman/Kazeminy relationship (the Neiman-Marcus affair) never yielded a story in the paper, this one has to. A quick recapitulation of the main known facts in the matter explains why.

There is a new factor in play in the Minnesota US Senate race, and it’s too soon to tell whether it will affect the tight contest between Sen. Norm Coleman, Al Franken and Dean Barkley.

The Pioneer Press’s Rachel Stassen-Berger has some details in her morning dispatch on the race. Coleman apparently freaked out after Star Tribune investigative reporters Paul McEnroe and Tony Kennedy showed up at a St. Cloud rally and tried to ask Coleman for comment on a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Texas — and withdrawn Wednesday — against Coleman “suitgate” pal Nasser Kazeminy.