The fireworks have been continuing today at the local level in the Minnesota election trial — and the national parties got involved in Washington, too, the place where this election could finally be decided.
At a Democratic leadership press conference today, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer responded to a question about the case by saying they expected it to be wrapped up and for Franken to be seated in weeks. “The projections — and they’re not locked in — are that this should all be finished by the very beginning of April,” said Schumer.
Schumer did acknowledge that the process isn’t over, but predicted that it will end. “The people of Minnesota are very fair people, and they’ll grant him appeals,” Schumer said. “But sooner or later this is going to come to an end.”
Harry Reid chimed in: “There’s going to come a time when Coleman’s going to have to recognize that he’s lost — he’s lost this election. This should have been over a long time ago.”
This prompted an angry statement e-mailed out from Michael Steele, who accused the Dems of trying to short-circuit the process in Minnesota:
The people of Minnesota expect and deserve a fair election process that ensures every valid vote is counted and counted only once. As it stands now, there are thousands of absentee ballots that have not been counted and potentially hundreds more that have been counted twice. Instead of attempting to short circuit election law, the Senate Majority Leader should focus on the out of control spending going on in Washington. Once the recount is completed, I fully expect Senator Coleman to be where he was on election night: in the lead. When that happens, we will welcome back a senator who values fiscal responsibility, lower taxes and will not vote to saddle future generations with unprecedented debt. I join my fellow Republicans in standing firmly behind Norm Coleman and his pursuit to ensure no Minnesota voter is disenfranchised.”
And the spin keeps going in Minnesota, too.
Earlier today I noted that Coleman spokesman Ben Ginsberg had withdrawn his motion to be admitted as an attorney in the case. He’d only submitted it a week ago, after having represented himself to reporters as a Coleman lawyer since the trial began a month ago. Now he’s withdrawn the motion, and it appeared uncertain whether he would still be doing his amazing press conferences running down the court’s decisions and the reliability of the election result.
But it turns out he was right there giving his post-court press conference. “And after hearing today’s testimony, it would be hard and I believe frightening if you had the duty of certifying the exact number of legal votes after hearing the testimony,” Ginsberg said. “It is difficult to have any faith in the accuracy of the count in this election, given what you heard today.”
Ginsberg also stuck to his guns somewhat on the campaign’s claim that 300 ballots were illegally counted by the Democratic stronghold of St. Louis County. He said the county’s explanation — that these were overseas ballots stored by local official in local, roughly-filled out envelopes — couldn’t apply to all of those ballots produced. And he accused the county of failing to fully reply to the subpoena requests for documents that would have made the situation clearer.
So why would he withdraw his motion to be be an attorney in the courtroom, but still be here as a spokesman? One possible explanation: It’s much more difficult to be a spin-man making false pronouncements and denouncing the court, when you are also an officer of the court and bound by ethics rules of a practicing attorney in the case.
