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Capitol View®
Brian Bakst

DFL presses Daudt on debt cases; speaker pushes back

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Updated 1:41 p.m. | Posted 12:13 p.m.

Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin pressed Republican House Speaker Kurt Daudt on Monday to produce more documentation to back up the lawmaker's assertion he got no special treatment to resolve a set of debt lawsuits against him.

MPR News reported last week that Daudt had been sued three times in a year over thousands of dollars in unpaid charges and that all of the cases were resolved.  Lobbyist Reid LeBeau was Daudt's attorney in one of the cases and had an unspecified role in the other two, but the speaker said he paid LeBeau's fees. Daudt has also said he "paid every dollar fully" that he owed.

Martin said he can't prove a well-connected lobbying firm took extraordinary steps when it moved to dismiss debt judgments it had earlier won against Daudt on behalf of a credit card company. The firm, Messerli and Kramer P.A., hasn't commented specifically on Daudt's cases but stressed that its debt-collection branch and its lobbying team operate independently from each other.

"I have no evidence right now, but there are a lot of questions that remain," Martin said.

Martin didn't indicate whether the party would pursue any kind of campaign or ethics complaints against the Legislature's top Republican if he didn't comply with the request. For his part, Daudt said on TPT's Almanac program on Friday that Democrats are "trying to keep this story alive as long as they can."

Daudt added that "they’re trying to make a lot out of nothing. The Democrats efforts to make me look normal and relatable have been successful.”

A spokesperson for Daudt didn't immediately respond to an email Monday asking if Daudt would produce invoices of his legal bills or additional materials connected to the cases, a prospect he left open last week.

A spokesperson for Daudt said the speaker would not be releasing any additional documents on his personal finances. She pointed to exchanges with the media from last week when Daudt said his credit card bills were paid in full and that he paid his own legal bills.