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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Reporters tried for days and weeks to get Coleman’s reply to charges

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

Paul McEnroe and Tony Kennedy said today they had sought an interview with Coleman for days and warned his campaign that without one they’d have to raise the issue at an Oct. 29 campaign event. And the record shows that by that time local reporters had been trying to get answers from Coleman for at least three weeks.

“They knew the cameras were there,” Coleman told WCCO-TV on Sunday. “They could have gone back and had a quiet conversation if that was the purpose. My point being they appeared in a Democratic Party ad four days before an election on something that never happened.”

The public showdown (video) wasn’t the reporters’ first try or their first choice, they said. “We made every attempt to have a ‘conversation,’ as the senator put it, but we were continually stonewalled by his staff in the days prior to our attempt to talk to him during his campaign stop in St. Cloud,” McEnroe and Kennedy told Braublog.

In fact, Coleman was already griping about reporters’ questions on the topic and stonewalling them three weeks before Kennedy and McEnroe made their stand in St. Cloud, as Steve Perry explained in a Minnesota Independent post last November:

On October 10, Norm Coleman volunteered on the record that “Over the last several days I have received a fresh batch of questions from reporters, fueled by blogs, about personal issues concerning… my wife.” … 

At an October 8 press conference (here’s a Publius post with transcript) that’s been widely viewed on YouTube — the one in which Coleman rep Cullen Sheehan repeated the same boilerplate response about whether Nasser Kazeminy bought suits for Norm Coleman — Rachel Stassen-Berger of the Pioneer Press asks Coleman about his wife’s job at Hays Companies.

And speaking (as Coleman did on Sunday) of ads that run “four days before an election on something that never happened,” it’s worth noting that the former senator no longer talks about the charges he leveled against Franken in his own last-minute campaign ad (hat tip to commenter lenzy1000 at The UpTake’s live chat):

Al Franken’s eleventh-hour attack, phony accusations filled with lies delivered anonymously to a Minnesota paper before being filed in a Texas court, the vicious personal attack on my wife. This time Al Franken’s crossed the line. My name’s on the ballot. I’m fair game for his smears. My wife and family are not. In Minnesota this is as dirty as it gets. I’m Norm Coleman. I approved this message because there’s got to be a better way.

Coleman saw fit to make that accusation against Franken at the eleventh hour before the election. But now, at the whatever-hour of the election contest, reporters have become his target.

Norm and Laurie: A second Coleman-Kazeminy connection implicates Mrs. C.

The figure of Nasser Kazeminy — longtime Norm Coleman friend and patron — is once again casting a shadow over the U.S. 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.

(UPDATE: The Nation has obtained a copy of the suit. Someone sent one to MnIndy as well; it’s posted here.)

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 Tony 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.

1) The lawsuit was filed Tuesday Monday in a Texas court. Kazeminy was the defendant; the plaintiff is not publicly known at present.

2) One of the claims in the lawsuit, judging from McEnroe’s questions on the video, is the allegation that Laurie Coleman received $75,000 indirectly from Kazeminy, disbursed by Deep Marine Technologies, a company of which Kazeminy owns a substantial share, and paid to Hays Companies, an insurance/risk management outfit where Laurie Coleman was on the payroll.

3) The lawsuit was withdrawn on Wednesday. In his comments to the Pioneer Press, Coleman said the claim was “’simply false.’… The purpose of this stuff is to, at the 11th hour, throw something out there and see if it sticks. There were some things that we believe were thrown in there for the purpose of influencing the campaign. It was withdrawn because the attorneys recognized that there were some things in there that weren’t factual.” Coleman claims, in other words, that the suit was withdrawn because it lacked merit — because the allegations contained in it were false.

4) When asked directly about the disposition of the lawsuit — specifically, whether Kazeminy had struck a settlement with the plaintiff — Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan said he didn’t know: “I don’t know about the details of a settlement or not.”

So either the plaintiff was leaned on to withdraw a legal action without merit, or the defendant made a settlement with that party within 24 hours or so of the litigation’s filing. Which was it? The implications regarding the merits of the underlying claim would be judged very differently by most legal observers depending on the answer.

5) The Star Tribune’s McEnroe and Kennedy — unlike any other reporters in town, to our knowledge — have a copy of the lawsuit, which MnIndy and no doubt others are pursuing through the county court systems of Texas. McEnroe and Kennedy are thus in a position to contact the principals’ attorneys of record to get an answer about the disposition of the suit, and to elaborate on the nature of the claims in it, with whatever caveats and disclaimers their reporting of the story may dictate.

But under no circumstances should the public be left in the dark concerning the backstory that frames this unusual turn of events. If the Strib stays mum this time, it will only get tougher for them to deny the not-exactly-subtle pro-GOP bias on the part of the paper’s editors.

Strib reporter Paul McEnroe asks Coleman through closed window, "Senator, there's a lawsuit alleging that your wife received $75,000 with Mr. Kazeminy's help.... Please answer the questions, Senator!"

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. Stassen-Berger writes:

Coleman’s [stump appearance] plan … was diverted Wednesday after reporters questioned him during his St. Cloud stop about a lawsuit filed against Coleman contributor Nasser Kazeminy. Coleman walked out of the St. Cloud restaurant where he had just finished his stump speech and jumped into his SUV without answering questions.

Shortly thereafter, reporters traveling with Coleman got word from Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who had spent the past two days on the road with him, that the senator was canceling the rest of his Wednesday stops and heading back to the Twin Cities. Within an hour, Pawlenty called reporters to say Coleman would resume his campaign trip.

According to Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan, the lawsuit, filed Tuesday and withdrawn Wednesday, alleged money was given to Laurie Coleman, the senator’s wife, through the insurance company for which she works to help the Colemans’ personal finances.

The claim was “simply false,” Coleman said. “The purpose of this stuff is to, at the 11th hour, throw something out there and see if it sticks,” Coleman said. “There were some things that we believe were thrown in there for the purpose of influencing the campaign. It was withdrawn because the attorneys recognized that there were some things in there that weren’t factual.”

So that’s Coleman’s story. But as Paul Demko writes elsewhere at MnIndy regarding Coleman’s Thursday press conference,

Yesterday it was revealed that a lawsuit was recently filed in Texas charging that the Senator’s wife, Laurie, inappropriately received $75,000 from longtime Coleman supporter Nasser Kazeminy. The money was allegedly channeled through the insurance company where she works. Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan stated that the lawsuit has been withdrawn, but it remains unclear if a settlement was reached in the matter. “I don’t know about the details of a settlement or not,” Sheehan said.

Note that Norm Coleman claimed the suit was dropped for lack of merit. That does not exactly jibe with the possibility that it was very quickly settled.

Check out this video, via Aaron Landry at MnPublius, in which Coleman, who refuses to roll down his window even as Paul McEnroe presses the lawsuit up against the glass, hardly comes off as a man with nothing to hide.