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Republican Senate hopeful Mike McFadden’s apparent role in a restructuring deal that cost more than 400 people their jobs in Montana is the subject of Sen. Al Franken’s latest ad against McFadden.

The minute-long ad is bleak. Former employees of the Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. mill in Frenchtown, Montana, stand outside the facility's shuttered gates talking about how long they worked at the paper board plant.

“Mike McFadden was the CEO of the company that helped put us out of work,” says one former worker as video of McFadden flashes across the screen.

There’s no evidence that McFadden helped Smurfit-Stone in the restructuring process.

The Evidence

Much like PoliGraph’s previous reporting on McFadden’s role in Lazard Middle Market, the Minneapolis investment firm he ran before his bid for office, and Lazard, its parent company, this fact-check concerns how you define McFadden’s business. In the past, PoliGraph has said that McFadden’s business is the one based in Minneapolis, not Lazard Middle Market’s parent company – though McFadden has personally benefited from being a part of the Lazard family and the two are closely tied.

Furthermore, Lazard Middle Market did assist companies in the bankruptcy process with McFadden at the helm.

In 2008, Smurfit-Stone hired Lazard to guide it through the restructuring process.

Ultimately, Smurfit-Stone closed its Frenchtown mill and 417 people lost their jobs in the process. According to the Helena Independent Record, Smurfit president Steve Klinger said that the Frenchtown mill wasn’t profitable enough for the company (though the mill ended up staying open a few more days after it was slated to shut for good to finish extra orders.)

The Franken ad is mostly right on the details of the plant’s closing.

But the spot also implies that McFadden advised Smurfit-Stone to shut the Missoula plant to save money, and the talking point is a critical part of the Franken campaign's efforts to paint McFadden as wealthy and out-of-touch with Minnesotans.

To make their case, Franken’s campaign points out that Lazard Middle Market, McFadden’s firm, listed Smurfit-Stone on its website as a client until the Franken ad went up last week. As of Oct. 18, 2014, the Smurfit-Stone project was still on Lazard Middle Market’s website and now it is not.

No one from Lazard Middle Market or Lazard has provided an on-the-record explanation for why Smurfit-Stone was removed from the firm’s website so abruptly.

But that’s not necessarily evidence that McFadden advised Smurfit-Stone personally, as the ad implies.

In fact, a spokeswoman for Lazard said Lazard Middle Market and McFadden had nothing to do with the Smurfit-Stone restructuring process.

Three other Lazard employees based in Chicago – none working at Lazard Middle Market – are credited with handling Smurfit-Stone’s restructuring plan. They include David Kurtz, who led the project, Joe Miller and Dan Aronson.

In fact, the Turnaround Management Association of Chicago/The Midwest gave the trio the 2011 “Large Company Turnaround of the Year” award along with other firms that guided Smurfit-Stone through the bankruptcy process.

The Verdict

The Franken ad implies that McFadden advised Smurfit-Stone on the bankruptcy process and that he’s responsible for the 417 layoffs at the Frenchtown Smurfit-Stone mill.

While the fact that Smurfit-Stone was listed as Lazard Middle Management’s client until recently raises some questions, McFadden’s fingerprints aren’t on the project otherwise.

As a result, this ad is misleading to the point of being false.