And other late updates from the ongoing U.S. Senate race in Minnesota...

Brad Friedman Byon 1/23/2009, 3:10pm PT

From TPM:

At a pre-trial hearing in the Minnesota election lawsuit just now, Franken attorney Kevin Hamilton made a striking accusation: That the Coleman campaign has been doctoring evidence. As an example, Hamilton showed two photocopies of a rejected absentee ballot envelope, one of which he said was the unaltered original, and the other taken from Coleman's legal filings in his attempts to get more of the rejected ballots opened. The Coleman copy was missing the section in which a local election official explained why it was rejected.

We are without words. Coleman's attorney "speculated that there may have been a photocopying problem." Sparse details in the rest of the TPM piece on this, but we'll see if we can learn anything further.

TPM's Eric Kleefeld also reports, in related articles, that former Sen. Norm Coleman's attorney was "openly heckled" by one of the judges on the three-judge panel --- this one, a Republican appointee.

And, in other news from Minnesota's U.S. Senate race election contest, apparent-winner Al Franken's bid to have the entire case dismissed was denied yesterday, while Coleman's hopes of receiving permission from the three-judge panel to inspect all ballots and voter rolls (in their search for votes, and hopes of delaying the formal beginning of the trial next Monday) was similarly denied.

Also, Coleman may be getting used to the fact that it looks like he's not going back to D.C.. He's accepted a "temporary" job as "a strategic adviser to the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC)."

By the way, Franken seems constantly referred to as "comedian Al Franken" in mainstream news reports. Setting aside that he was most-frequently a radio talk show host for years, in addition to the author of several books, we can't recall any other candidate for office so consistently being referred to by their former occupation. Not that there's a bias in the corporate media in this matter or anything, just ask strategic adviser Norm Coleman.

UPDATE 1/26/09: The court tosses Coleman's "doctored evidence" on the first official day of the trial. Details now here...



