A good catch by The Huffington Post yesterday, in response to the news that Norm Coleman is dropping out of the race for chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to focus on the Minnesota recount — and is throwing his support behind John Cornyn, who will almost certainly now win the post.
HuffPo notes that Cornyn, of Texas, is also currently the GOP chair of the Senate Ethics Committee – the body that could well investigate whether Coleman accepted gifts from his longtime supporter Nasser Kazeminy.
Earlier this week, the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, a good-government group that ran anti-Coleman ads during the election, publicly called on the Ethics Committee, as well as the FBI, to look into sworn allegations, made in a lawsuit, that Kazeminy passed $75,000 to Coleman by having one of Kazeminy’s companies make payments to an insurance brokerage that employs Laurie Coleman, the senator’s wife.
So Coleman’s decision to drop out of the NRSC race directly benefits one of the people who will have the most influence over the direction of any investigation by the Ethics Committee.
Coleman’s Senate office has not responded to numerous requests from TPMmuckraker to comment on whether he has already been contacted by investigators.
But there’s another wrinkle beyond HuffPo‘s catch: But for the GOP chair of the supposedly non-partisan Ethics Commitee to also serve as head of the NRSC — an explicitly political post — might appear to present a conflict of interest.
Cornyn’s office did not immediately respond to a call from TPMmuckraker asking whether Cornyn intended to serve in both roles at once.
