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On Thursday, TV host and morning news anchor for McIntyre in the Morning Leeann Tweeden accused Senator Al Franken of assaulting her in 2006. The two toured together for the USO, and Franken was the show’s headliner.


In an essay published on KABC, the network where Tweeden’s show airs, she writes that during the tour, Franken asked her to join a skit he’d written which involved a kiss. Tweeden writes that USO Tours frequently involve material that were “full of sexual innuendo geared toward a young, male audience,” so she wasn’t shocked by the content, and planned to move her head at the last moment on stage, to heighten the joke.

On the day of the show 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.


Tweeden says she felt “disgusting and violated” and walked off to the bathroom to wash her mouth out. They performed the skit that night and several more times on tour, and she always turned her face away from Franken as she’d planned. But, she writes, Franken’s behavior towards her became extremely cold and hostile following the assault, and that he even drew devil horns on a headshot of her. She made sure never to be alone with him again.

On the trip home, Tweeden fell asleep on the cargo plane, still wearing her flak vest and Kevlar helmet. Later, she says went through a CD of photos from the tour’s photographer and discovered an image of Franken grabbing her breasts through the vest.

I couldn’t believe it. He groped me, without my consent, while I was asleep. I felt violated all over again. Embarrassed. Belittled. Humiliated. How dare anyone grab my breasts like this and think it’s funny?

Tweeden writes that she was inspired to share her story after interviewing California Congresswoman Jackie Speier, who told her a man in her office “held her face, kissed her and stuck his tongue in her mouth,” as Tweeden alleges Franken did.

Senator Franken, you wrote the script. But there’s nothing funny about sexual assault. You wrote the scene that would include you kissing me and then relentlessly badgered me into ‘rehearsing’ the kiss with you backstage when we were alone. You knew exactly what you were doing. 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.


She writes that she wants her story to have the same effect on other women as Speier’s did for her—motivate them to end the silence around their assaults.

In a statement provided to Jezebel, Franken said, “I certainly don’t remember the rehearsal for the skit in the same way, but I send my sincerest apologies to Leeann. As to the photo, it was clearly intended to be funny but wasn’t. I shouldn’t have done it.”




Updated 1:00 pm:

Franken has released a much lengthier statement that includes a promise to comply with an ethics investigation, which is being called for by Democrat Senator Patty Murray: