Radio host and former Playboy model says Democratic Senator Al Franken kissed and GROPED her while she was asleep and without consent during a USO tour to Afghanistan in 2006
Update:
Democratic U.S. Senator Al Franken is the latest high-profile man in power to face a sexual assault accusation after a model-turned-radio host wrote Thursday that the longtime comedian and comic writer kissed and groped her without consent during a 2006 USA tour in Afghanistan.
Franken, a champion of women's causes, last month donated money his campaigns and political action committees have received from disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein to the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center.
And he responded to Weinstein's apparent history of serial sexual-assault last month in a stinging Facebook essay, saying that 'the disappointing responses women often face when they go public both embolden harassers and encourage victims to stay silent'."
But allegations from TalkRadio 790 KABC morning host Leeann Tweeden, who was a 23-year-old model at the time, could send Franken into the same reputational basket with him.
A spokesman for Senator Franken, who has served in office since 2009, has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
A California radio host and former model, Leeann Tweeden, claimed Thursday that Democratic Sen. Al Franken groped her while she slept on a military transport plane (pictured) and forcibly kissed her backstage during a 2006 USO goodwill tour
Leeann Tweeden says she's still angry at Sen. Franken and has found the courage to speak about her experience because of other women who have described similar mistreatment at the hands of powerful men
Franken is a Democratic lawmaker who excoriated Harvey Weinstein and supported his many accusers last month, ultimately giving a women's charity in Minnesota all the money Weinstein had donated to his political campaigns
On Thursday morning Tweeden posted a lengthy essay describing Franken, before he ran for U.S. Senate in Minnesota, writing a script that called for him to kiss her – and insisting on a full-contact rehearsal backstage.
And she later was shown a photograph of Franken groping her breasts while she slept aboard a military transport plane on the way home to the United States.
Tweeden and Franken were both veterans of USO tours, entertaining American military troops; she had already completed eight such trips before the one in question.
Country singers came along to croon, and some of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders provided window-dressing. Tweeden had already appeared, clothed, as a cover girl on FHM, Maxim, and Playboy.
But Franken, the comic writer whose ideas propelled much of the first 20 seasons of 'Saturday Night Live,' was the main draw.
'I was only expecting to emcee and introduce the acts, but Franken said he had written a part for me that he thought would be funny, and I agreed to play along,' Tweeden wrote Thursday.
'When I saw the script, Franken 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 recalls, Franken insisted on rehearsing the kiss.
'Relax Al, this isn't SNL. ... we don’t need to rehearse the kiss,' she remembers telling him.
But nevertheless, he persisted.
Instead of letting Tweeden turn her head upstage to avoid his lips – a common sleight-of-hand bit of stagecraft – '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.'
'All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth,' she writes now. 'I felt disgusted and violated.'
Franken's version of the real kiss was never repeated on stage, and she never told the USO brass what happened because 'I didn’t want to cause trouble. We were in the middle of a war zone, it was the first show of our Holiday tour, I was a professional, and I could take care of myself.'
On Christmas Eve, after 2 weeks of performing in the Middle East, the troupe headed home on a 36-hour journey.
Tweeden fell fast asleep in her bulletproof jacket and helmet.
Later, when a photographer passed out CD-ROMs of candid pictures from the trip, she saw one depicting Franken grabbing her chest.
'I couldn’t believe it. He groped me, without my consent, while I was asleep,' she wrote Thursday.
'I felt violated all over again. Embarrassed. Belittled. Humiliated. How dare anyone grab my breasts like this and think it’s funny?'
Like other women in similar situations at the mercy of powerful men, Tweeden says she kept quiet for more than a decade out of fear of what pointing fingers might have done to her career as a broadcaster.
But a recent appearance by California Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier on her show gave her courage.
Speier told a story about being sexually assaulted when she was a young congressional aide, an episode where a powerful man 'held her face, kissed her and stuck his tongue in her mouth.'
'At that moment,' Tweeden recalled Thursday, 'I thought to myself, "Al Franken did that exact same thing to me".'
And she's still angry about it.
'Senator Franken, you wrote the script. But there's nothing funny about sexual assault,' she wrote.
'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.'
'I want the days of silence to be over forever,' she added.
Franken wrote in his own October 11 Facebook essay that '[t]he women who have shared their stories about Harvey Weinstein over the last few days are incredibly brave. It takes a lot of courage to come forward, and we owe them our thanks.'
'And as we hear more and more about Mr. Weinstein, it’s important to remember that while his behavior was appalling, it’s far too common,' he wrote then.
Move over Roy Moore... here cums Al
