Broadcaster says Sen. Al Franken ‘forcibly kissed,’ groped her
Senator apologizes for 2006 incident, says he will cooperate with ethics investigation
WASHINGTON — Broadcaster and model Leeann Tweeden said Thursday that Al Franken “forcibly kissed” and groped her during a USO tour in 2006, two years before the Minnesota Democrat’s election to the U.S. Senate — prompting Franken to apologize and call for a Senate ethics investigation into his own actions.
“You knew exactly what you were doing,” Tweeden wrote in a blog post. “You forcibly kissed me without my consent, grabbed my breasts while I was sleeping and had someone take a photo of you doing it, knowing I would see it later and be ashamed.”
The allegations came two days after a hearing in Washington, where lawmakers acknowledged sexual harassment is a pervasive problem on Capitol Hill — and amid mounting sexual misconduct accusations against Alabama Republican Roy Moore, who has brushed off calls from GOP leaders to end his Senate campaign.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called on the Senate Ethics Committee to review the allegations against Franken, who first issued a brief statement of apology, then later a longer one in which he called for an investigation, saying, “I will gladly cooperate.”
“There’s more I want to say, but the first and most important thing — and if it’s the only thing you care to hear, that’s fine — is: I’m sorry,” Franken said. “I respect women. I don’t respect men who don’t. And the fact that my own actions have given people a good reason to doubt that makes me feel ashamed.”
At a news conference in Los Angeles, where she works as a radio news anchor, Tweeden said she accepted Franken’s apology and that she would leave any disciplinary action up to Senate leaders.
At the time of the 2006 USO tour, Tweeden was a Fox Sports Network correspondent and fitness model. Franken, a former writer for Saturday Night Live, was an Air America radio host just months away from announcing his Senate candidacy.
Tweeden recalled that Franken “had written some skits for the show and brought props and costumes to go along with them. Like many USO shows before and since, the skits were full of sexual innuendo geared toward a young, male audience.”
Franken, she said, “had written a moment when his character comes at me for a ‘kiss’. I suspected what he was after, but I figured I could turn my head at the last minute or put my hand over his mouth, to get more laughs from the crowd.”
But on the day of the show, she wrote, “Franken and I were alone backstage going over our lines one last time. He said to me, ‘We need to rehearse the kiss.’ I laughed and ignored him. Then he said it again. I said something like, ‘Relax Al, this isn’t SNL … we don’t need to rehearse the kiss.’
“He continued to insist, and I was beginning to get uncomfortable.
“He repeated that actors really need to rehearse everything and that we must practice the kiss. I said ‘OK’ so he would stop badgering me. We did the line leading up to the kiss and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.
“I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time.
“I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth. “I felt disgusted and violated.” In his first statement, Franken said: “I certainly don’t remember the rehearsal for the skit in the same way, but I send my sincerest apologies to Leeann.” He also acknowledged he shouldn’t have taken the photo from the tour that Tweeden included in her blog post.
The image shows Franken looking into a camera, his hands either over or on Tweeden’s chest as she slept.
Tweeden said she finally decided to share her story because “the tide has turned.”
“So many people have come out. And I’ve wanted to tell this story because it’s bugged me for so long. It’s made me angry for so long. I’ve been humiliated for so long,” she said. “Now is the time — don’t wait, don’t hold it in. … We’ve got to change the culture. We’ve got to change the silence.”
The allegations rocked the Capitol, prompting numerous senators to call for an ethics investigation.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., condemned her colleague’s behavior. Just last week, the Senate had approved a bill, which Klobuchar co-sponsored, that will mandate sexual harassment training for all senators and their staffs.
“This should not have happened to Leeann Tweeden,” Klobuchar said. “This is another example of why we need to change work environments and reporting practices across the nation, including in Congress.”