AL’S PHOTO SHOOT IS GRABBY CHEEK
Revealed: His grip-&-grin with Huffington
Newly revealed pictures show Sen. Al Franken grabbing self-described feminist Arianna Huffington on her bottom and breasts.
The never-before-published images, taken for a magazine in 2000 and obtained exclusively by The Post, include a number of frames showing the former “Saturday Night Live” star grabbing the media mogul’s buttocks as they pose back to back.
An even more shocking snap shows the pair posing on a bed, with Franken cupping Huffington’s breast with one hand.
“Franken was clowning around, but it really isn’t funny,” said a source from the shoot. “That’s his tactic, pretend like it’s all a big joke. Arianna was pushing his hands away. He was groping her. There was some fun attached to it, but she wasn’t enjoying it. She definitely told him to stop and pushed him away.”
The creepy pol — who on Monday was accused of squeezing a constituent’s butt during a photo op in 2010 and who was caught posing with his mitts over a sleeping ex-Playboy model’s breasts in a 2006 snap — was hardly hiding his hands-on approach, according to the source.
“Franken stood there with his hand on her bottom for a long time, because there are numerous frames, each taken seconds apart, and his hand was there the whole time — his hand wasn’t just there for a quick moment,” the source said.
The pictures were taken by Harry Benson, an award-winning Scottish photographer, who declined to comment.
Huffington, however, denied anything was amiss, saying the touchyfeely photos were a nod to a TV sketch she and Franken did in 1996.
“The notion that there was anything inappropriate in this photo shoot is truly absurd,” she said in a statement to The Post.
“Al and I did a comedic sketch for Bill Maher’s ‘Politically Incorrect’ called ‘Strange Bedfellows,’ in which the whole point, as the name makes clear, was that we were doing political commentary from bed. This shoot was looking back at the sketch, and we were obviously hamming it up for comedic effect.
“I’ve been great friends with Al and his wife, Franni, for over 20 years and there has never been anything remotely inappropriate in our interactions.”
In fact, Huffington — the co-founder of The Huffington Post and CEO of the wellness company Thrive Global — has previously credited their in-bed interviews as having made her career.
“[Franken] once gave me a picture of himself that said, ‘I made you,’ — and in many ways he did,” she said during a 2014 book launch, The Hill reported at
the time. “The biggest thing I did in my career was in 1996, when I went to bed with [Franken] for a comedy bit called ‘Strange Bedfellows.’ ”
The segment featured both in pajamas. It once ended in a pillow fight.
“Good evening. I’m the beautiful but evil Arianna Huffington, in bed with the talented but smug Al Franken,” she said introducing one conversation.
Huffington has been outspoken about sexual harassment in recent months, amid a rash of allegations against powerful perverts in the media and business worlds.
“For decades, it was kept in the shadows and now that is changing, which is becoming a catalyst for dramatic changes,” she told CNBC.
An Uber board member, she has taken a prominent role in cleaning up the company’s culture amid complaints of sexual harassment in the office.
“Going forward, there can be no room at Uber for brilliant jerks,” the high-flying 67-year-old media exec was reported to have said in a recent conference call.
But she has also been accused of turning a blind eye to sexual-harassment at The Huffington Post — by relocating one of her most trusted lieutenants to India in 2014 following allegations against him, according to a recent Gizmodo report.
Huffington declined to comment to the tech blog.
The senator’s office did not comment on the photos with Huffington.
Meanwhile, a woman came forward on Monday to accuse Franken of “tightly” grabbing her butt in 2010.
Lindsay Menz, 33, told CNN that Franken grabbed her while they were posing for a photo at the Minnesota State Fair.
Last week, former Playboy model Leeann Tweeden accused Franken of forcibly kissing her during a 2006 USO tour.