Senate's $46,000 legal bill is due for sex scandal defense

The Minnesota Senate is discovering that defending itself from sex-scandal related legal threats is expensive.

On Friday, Senate officials disclosed that they owe $46,150 for three months of legal fees -- and the bill will only grow.

The bill from Dayle Nolan, a private attorney the Senate hired to defend it against ex-employee Michael Brodkorb, and her firm only goes through March of this year.

Those costs do not yet include all the time Nolan sat in Senate ethics committee meetings, where a former Senate leader was accused of mishandling the sex scandal, and come before Brodkorb has even filed a suit in a court room.

Brodkorb was fired in December after former Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch quit leadership, in the wake of being confronted about the affair she and he were having. He has threatened to sue the Senate for his firing and for defamation.

The bill, which includes a detailed accounting of Nolan and other attorneys time, includes repeated references to conferences with Tom Bottern, Senate counsel, and Cal Ludeman, the secretary of the senate.

It also includes one $3,960 charge for Nolan's attendance in a March Senate ethics committee. It does not include the charges for attending an equally long April meeting that deadlocked on whether former Deputy Senate Majority Leader Geoff Michel violated proper Senate behavior by not disclosing his knowledge of the affair before December and then misleading the press about when he discovered the affair.