On a conference call with reporters, lead Franken lawyer Marc Elias reacted to the Coleman campaign’s filing of its notice of appeal — and lambasted it up and down, before calling for a super-speedy expedited schedule for the state Supreme Court to handle this.
“So what we have now is the death throes of the Coleman legal effort,” Elias said. “This is a process that has obviously been going on for some time now. I understand how difficult it is, emotionally and otherwise, for a candidate and a legal team to come to the place where they must accept that they simply didn’t get as many votes as the other candidate. And I’ve said to some of you before, both on calls and one on one, I’ve represented enough campaigns to know how difficult that is.”
In substantive terms, Elias announced that the Franken camp will be filing tomorrow a motion for expedited review by the state Supreme Court. “Former Senator Coleman’s legal team and former Senator Coleman himself has at various times indicated an interest in expeditious review,” Elias pointed out. “I will leave it to others to hypothesize why the filing today took as many days as it did. But I take them at their word that they are interested in an expeditious review and ruling by the state Supreme Court.”
The proposed schedule from Team Franken calls for Coleman to submit his legal brief by next Monday, April 27, for Franken to submit his brief by Saturday, May 2, and for Coleman to file any new reply by that Monday, May 4. Said Elias: “We would ask the court to set an argument as quickly as the court is able to, and is convenient for them. So we are prepared to move forward on an expedited basis from here.”
“It seems that every time the Coleman team has a setback, they proclaim it a victory, and announce that victory is just around the corner,” Elias said. “Thankfully, I think with the state Supreme Court getting this case now, we will be at the end of this road, and we hopefully will be able to all move forward in the near future to having Senator Franken — have Senator-elect Franken be Senator Franken.”
