The answer is yes — and no.

“There’s no such thing as a straightforward question in this area of law,” says Joseph Birkenstock, an attorney with the Washington law firm of Caplin & Drysdale, who specializes in campaign finance law.

Indeed MnIndy’s efforts to answer this question initially yielded conflicting expert opinions.

Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia University Law School, said Pawlenty could use the money for a presidential bid.

“There would be no general problem with shifting money from one campaign to the other if the money satisfies the legal requirements of the second campaign,” Briffault said.

But Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School and author of the Election Law blog, initially disputed that assertion.

“There are certain rules that apply to the raising of money in federal elections that don’t apply to state elections,” he noted.

So who’s right? They both are. Simply transferring the money to a new campaign committee is not an option. That would violate federal law.

“That money’s really verboten until he works it into a new federal committee,” says Birkenstock.

As that statement suggests, there is an intriguing potential end-run around this prohibition for Pawlenty. He could return the money to the donors, while at the same time soliciting a contribution for his presidential bid. Donors would then have the option of committing the funds to the new federal committee. Federal Election Commission regulations explicitly allow for such a transaction.

But there’s another potential sticking point for Pawlenty: The contributions must have been collected in adherence with federal campaign finance laws. Most notably, individual contributions can’t exceed $2,300, and corporate donations are banned.

This isn’t likely to be a significant hurdle, however. Under Minnesota’s campaign finance laws, donors are  limited to giving $500 in non-election years and can contribute up to $2,000 in election years. So theoretically they could give up to $3,500 during a four-year election cycle. In those instances, donors could simply hold on to any contributions that exceed $2,300.

Of course there’s no guarantee that donors would choose to funnel the money into Pawlenty’s presidential campaign. “They can keep the whole thing,” notes Birkenstock.

There’s also, of course, no guarantee Pawlenty will run for president.

Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School, lauds the the “careful, unanimous” ruling of the three-judge panel on his blog. “It makes findings of fact and conclusions of law that on first read appear reasonable and conservative,” Hasen writes. “The opinion considers the major arguments made by Coleman and rejects them in a detailed and measured way. It is the kind of opinion that is unlikely to be disturbed on appeal by either the Minnesota Supreme Court or the United States Supreme Court.”

Nate Silver, over at FiveThirtyEight, declares that Coleman’s prospects for prevailing have now reached “Calista Flockhart territory.” Silver also comes up with an estimate for how much the former senator might be spending to keep the legal fight going. His (admittedly imprecise) conclusion: $145,000 per week.

While the numbers guru figures Coleman’s odds of prevailing in the courts are incredibly slim, he also doesn’t see too many other options for the Republican politically. “His best bet might be to wait until 2014, when Franken would be up for re-election, but six years is a lifetime in politics,” Silver concludes. “Although Coleman’s chances of prevailing in his legal case are not very strong, they may be better than his next-best alternatives.”

NBC News’ First Read blog is equally dismissive of Coleman’s prospects. “We’ll say it again: The question increasingly is no longer whether Al Franken will be the next U.S. senator from Minnesota; it’s when he’ll be the next senator.”

Not surprisingly, Tim Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called on Coleman to concede.
“Enough is enough,” Kaine said in a statement. “It is time for Norm Coleman to concede and for Al Franken to be sworn in as the next U.S. Senator from Minnesota. The voters of Minnesota months ago elected Al Franken to the Senate — and during every step in the legal process that judgment has been confirmed.”

Slightly less predictable was the reaction of MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. “When are the Republicans gonna give up the ghost on this?” Scarborough asked on today’s edition of “Morning Joe.” “Norm, I like you. You lost. Can we seat a senator so Amy [Klobuchar] doesn’t have to do the job of two senators. … It is seriously not fair to constituents in Minnesota to drag this out any longer. It’s over, Norm.”

Here’s the video of Scarborough: