Senator Norm Coleman charged today that a lawsuit alleging that his close friend and campaign donor Nasser Kazeminy funneled money to his wife were “absolutely false.” Coleman said “Al Franken and his political allies” cooked up the whole thing.

So is the lawsuit just a political dirty trick? Steve Perry at the Minnesota Independent offers five reasons to doubt that.

Perry’s list includes:

The lawsuit, contrary to the impression one might receive from Coleman’s response or from many of the press accounts, is not principally about the alleged payments to Laurie Coleman. The Kazeminy/Coleman narrative comprises roughly three pages of a 30-page legal complaint. Are we to believe the rest is all just incidental embroidery on a campaign to maliciously bring down Norm Coleman?

That complaint lodges numerous serious allegations about financial manipulations by Nasser Kazeminy and a number of his associates (there are six defendants in all). The plaintiff in the case, Paul McKim, would be facing serious legal jeopardy himself if those claims proved to be entirely baseless. (Counter-suit, anyone?)

The merits of McKim’s lawsuit remain to be tested, but it’s very dubious that the lawsuit was merely a political stunt. Either McKim or Kazeminy would appear to have a serious legal problem on their hands. And if it’s Kazeminy, Coleman does too.