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Remember: Businesses owned by family members of Kay Hagan received more than $400,000 in direct federal stimulus funding, tax credits, and other renewable energy payments and Team Hagan wants you to believe no one in the family benefited from the free cash.

This helps explain the latest installment in the ad war saga involving those payments and Hagan’s high-powered ethics team. Kate Sawyer Keane, an attorney with Perkins Coie LLP, the Democratic law firm that has worked for Hagan’s campaign since at least 2009 and found no problem with the Hagans’ involvement with the stimulus grant, is now strong-arming television stations with a warning letter hoping to silence a political ad on the controversy.

Dome reports that Keane is saying an ad from the Koch brothers-founded super PAC Freedom Partners Action Fund is “inflammatory and unsubstantiated,” and they’d better not run them any more. WLOS-TV in Asheville has succumbed to the pressure. “Quite simply, JDC Manufacturing could not have profited from the stimulus because the stimulus funds did not cover the entire cost of the project,” says the letter.

Let’s visit Mr. Webster, shall we? From my dog-eared Random House Websters College Dictionary (1997 edition), the first definition for profit as a transitive verb is

to gain an advantage or benefit

As I wrote earlier this week, there are many ways JDC Manufacturing, Plastic Revolutions, and Solardyne/Green State Power the companies co-owned by some combination of Kay Hagan’s husband Chip, their son Tilden, and Chip’s brothers John and David “gain[ed] an advantage or benefit” aka profited from taxpayer largess:

• JDC received $250,644 from the feds to offset the cost of making energy improvements and install a solar array at its building in Reidsville. It subsequently received an additional $137,000 in tax credits by making the upgrades.

• JDC’s tenant, Plastic Revolutions (also owned by the Hagans) expected to reduce its energy bills by $100,000 a year resulting from the upgrades. No stimulus, no energy savings.

• Solardyne/Green State Power owners Chip and Tilden performed at least some of the work at the facility; Tilden invoiced a solar company in Vermont for nearly $160,000 in equipment. No stimulus, no project, no job for Tilden.

• JDC’s building operates more efficiently and has a modern heating and cooling system, making the building more valuable to a potential tenant or potential buyer. No stimulus, no upgrades, no added capital value.

Maybe a $500-an-hour (pure guess here) lawyer can’t understand that this is profiting, but most people who aren’t being paid to think otherwise — including the general managers of television stations — might.

And if Ms. Keane or someone from her firm thinks I have this wrong, I’d be delighted to speak with her. There are a lot of questions the Hagan folks haven’t answered about this arrangement.