No Air America...

I continue to check the Washington Post every day in the vain hope it'll cover the Air America funding scandal, and of course no such luck. But I post on the subject today because Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney continue their investigation. Today:

Along with the network's current management and shell-game-playing owners, Al Franken has gotten a pass, even from some conservative commentators who have claimed that it's unfair to blame the liberal radio network's financial and legal entanglements on its on-air talent.

Those claims are wrong.

According to a November 2004 settlement agreement between former Air American head honchos Evan Cohen and Rex Sorensen and Air America's current owners and investors at Piquant LLC, Al Franken was smack dab in the middle of negotiations over the debts owed by the liberal radio network--including the Gloria Wise loan. The agreement was signed to clear the decks in advance of the questionable asset transfer from Air America's old owners, Progress Media and Radio Free America, to Piquant. (This is the transfer being challenged by Multicultural Radio Broadcasting Inc. as a "fraudulent conveyance," which we first reported exclusively in the first installment in our investigative blog series, "A Trail of Debts.")

Far from being an innocent party with no knowledge of Air America's money woes, Franken was a signatory to the agreement. The document, published here for the first time, exposes how Franken misled his listeners and the press about his knowledge of the charity loan....

As the saying goes, read it all.

UPDATE: And here's a belated link to part II of the report, at Brian Maloney's Radio Equalizer.

UPDATE 2 On Sept. 8: Think I better add this note since more hits are coming into this point after Michelle kindly provided another link today, in her latest update. For the record, Yes, We Still Have No Bananas:

The lack of returns you see to the left is as of 2 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 8. It's identical to the one generated first thing this morning. I'm checking the Post every day and of course following Malkin's and Brian Maloney's reporting.

Remember, the only coverage that has appeared anywhere in the Post domain was not in the newspaper, but rather in one AP story that was available on the website of washingtonpost.com. I have no idea if it was ever featured there, since hundreds of AP stories are available via the search engine, and only a fraction of them get played up on the home page. For a fuller account of what happened at the time, go here.