You can judge for yourself, but it sure sounds as if Norm Coleman's lead trial lawyer, Joe Friedberg, has thrown in the towel.

Friedberg appeared on KFAN radio in the Twin Cities on Wednesday with host Ron Rosenbaum, who is also a local lawyer.

The transcript first wound up on National Journal's Hotlineoncall.com Thursday night. We replay it here.

Rosenbaum: Now we have . . . Joe Friedberg, who in addition to being a prominent criminal defense
attorney has been leading the effort on behalf of Norm Coleman.  Joe, are you done?

Friedberg: Yeah, I'm done.

Rosenbaum: Well, let me ask you in a different way.  Is Norm done?

Friedberg: Well, I think that we’ve been trying this case with the appeal record in mind, and that’s where we're going and it's going to be a very quick appeal and then I’ll know whether or not it worked.

Rosenbaum: Well, when you say a quick appeal, are you confident that you
are going to lose the case in front of the three-judge panel?  By losing the
case, I mean Norm ends up with less votes.

Friedberg: I think that’s probably correct that Franken will still be ahead and probably by a little bit more.  But our whole argument was a constitutional argument and it’s an argument which is really suited for the
Minnesota Supreme Court, not for the trial court.  So we will see whether we were right or not.

Friedberg then went on to chat about how "equal protection" issues might be at play in this case.

But Mr. Friedberg sure seems prepared to put this case into his loss column.