Media coverage of ethics allegations against an Iowa state senator has wrongly depicted the controversy as a scandal implicating Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, an attorney for her campaign said Monday.

“The way the media is portraying this story is wrong, reckless, and outrageous,” Bachmann’s campaign lawyer Bill McGinley told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, after Bachmann’s former chief of staff filed an affidavit confirming that Iowa state Sen. Kent Sorenson was paid $7,500 a month for his role as Iowa chairman of Bachmann’s 2012 Republican presidential campaign. Those payments, first alleged by another former Bachmann campaign member, are the subject of an investigation by the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee.

Sorenson shocked Bachmann’s supporters in late December 2011 when, just five days before the crucial Jan. 3 Iowa GOP caucuses, he quit her campaign and endorsed Texas Rep. Ron Paul.

Accusations against Sorenson were first made by Peter Waldron, a Florida minister who led the campaign’s outreach to evangelical pastors in Iowa and other states for Bachmann. The controversy surrounding Bachmann’s presidential campaign, which she ended the day after she placed sixth in Iowa, has gotten extensive media coverage in Minnesota and Iowa. In an affidavit that became public Monday, former Bachmann chief of staff Andy Parrish said that he arranged with fundraiser Guy Short for Sorenson to be paid through a consulting firm.

McGinley said Parrish’s account actually vindicates Bachmann. “The affidavit by a former employee in fact confirms that Congresswoman Bachmann followed all applicable laws and ethical rules and instructed those working for her to do the same,” McGinley told the Star-Tribune. “The alleged arrangement at issue was both lawful and properly reported under federal law. This dispute is between the Iowa Senate and an Iowa senator.”

Bachmann’s Tea Party-themed campaign zoomed upward after she announced her candidacy in her first TV debate in June 2011. Within a few weeks, she was second in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls, behind eventual Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and in August 2011 won the Iowa GOP Straw Poll at Ames. Her campaign was subsequently eclipsed by other Republicans, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Atlanta businessman Herman Cain and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in the see-saw struggle to become the conservative alternative to Romney. Eventually, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum made a late surge to score a narrow win over Romney in the Iowa caucuses, and Bachmann quit after getting only 5 percent of the vote in the Hawkeye State.

Waldron’s accusations against Sorenson have helped prompt an investigation by the Federal Elections Commission. One top official of Bachmann’s presidential campaign told The American Spectator that after Bachmann quit the 2012 race, Waldron “made very clear … his intent and desire to disparage and discredit” others involved in her campaign. In a statement, Bachmann finance chairman James L. Pollack said: “I cannot speculate on Mr. Waldron’s motivation, other than to say other campaign members have long moved on, which I assume to be normal and customary.”