Al Franken’s bid to unseat incumbent Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) has hit a rough patch, as he tries to explain why he failed to pay worker’s compensation insurance on his employees in New York. The state says that he failed to pay for insurance on as many as 17 workers at a time, and that they began notifying him that he was breaking the law in April 2005 — after he was already in violation for three years.
Franken says he never received any of the communications from the state, so he didn’t know he was breaking the law. Blogger Michael Brodkorb notes that someone seems to have forged — badly — the signature of Franken’s doorman on one certified mail receipt. So who really signed it? As Ed Morrissey points out, the signature looks a lot like Franken’s. I believe that Ed made at least one mistake though: he asserts that if Franken forged the signature, he’s known about the violation since at least July, 2007. But unless Franken regularly and routinely forges signatures, he would have known about it before 2007. Presumably he would have signed his own name, unless he thought this was something he needed to avoid.
