Talk radio host accuses Sen. Al Franken of assault

A former model who now works for a news talk radio station in Los Angeles has accused Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., of forcibly kissing and groping her during a USO Tour of the Middle East in December 2006. Leeann Tweeden, morning news anchor at KABC, detailed her encounter with Franken, then a comedian, in an article posted on the radio station’s website. Franken headlined the holiday show for U.S. troops and wrote several skits for it, one of which included a part for Tweeden, the emcee. In the skit, Franken wanted to kiss Tweeden, and though it made her uncomfortable, she agreed to play along. She planned to turn her head at the last minute so he couldn’t actually kiss her. But during backstage rehearsals, when they were alone, Franken insisted on rehearsing the kiss. Tweeden said he grabbed her behind the head, smashed his lips to hers, and stuck his tongue in her mouth. “I felt disgusted and violated,” Tweeden recalled. Not wanting to cause trouble, especially at the beginning of the tour, Tweeden didn’t say anything to the organizers, telling only a few other people about what happened. When she returned home, Tweeden looked through a CD of photos from the tour and found one taken of her while she slept on the plane ride home. In it, Franken has his hands over her breasts while he grins over his shoulder at the camera. In a statement provided to a Minnesota television station, Franken denied part of Tweeden’s accusations: “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.”