Bipartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) says yes. Well sort of. Melanie Sloan, the group's executive director, was contacted today by Emily Kaiser of the Minneapolis City Pages to clarify their report on Congressional corruption issued on September 9th, 2008 and displayed at their Crewsmostcorrupt.org website. This was in response to today's announcement from the Norm Coleman campaign that they are suing the Al Franken campaign for violating state campaign law because of TV and radio ads that state that Norm Coleman is the 4th most corrupt Senator in the U.S. Senate.
Melanie told the City Pages earlier today, "I can see how they came to that conclusion, but that's certainly not what we said."
Because CREW only listed 4 senators in their report and the other 96 did not make the report she said it would be correct to say Coleman is one of four most corrupt senators in their report.
Some could argue that if Norm Coleman is in the top 4 and not necessarily ranked by CREW then the Al Franken campaign gave Norm Coleman the benefit of the doubt by ranking him 4th instead of possibly higher, like say the 2nd most corrupt Senator or even 3rd most corrupt Senator.
[BREAKING NEWS: A lawsuit filed by a Texas businessman alleges that he was forced to make $75,000 in secret payments to Norm Coleman through the senator’s wife Laurie. ]
Breaking video of reporters trying to ask Norm Coleman about the allegations made in this lawsuit.
