Al Franken’s Allegations Never Received Scrutiny
One of the biggest problems in the #metoo movement has long been the hashtag #believewomen which implies that every single women who makes a sexual assault claim needs to be believed. While sexual assault is definitely under reported and even though a woman making a fake allegation tends to be very rare, that doesn’t guarantee that everything a woman says is true.
Over the past month and a half, Tara Reade made allegations against Joe Biden claiming that he digitally penetrated her. She also made allegations a year ago claiming that Biden wanted her to serve drinks at a fundraiser which she refused. On the surface, it looked like it could have been a credible allegation given that Reade was indeed employed by Biden in 1993.
However, more details kept coming out about Reade’s past that threw a lot of cold water on her claims. PBS revealed that there was never a culture of sexual harassment in Biden’s office with 62 female former staffers confirming that. Reade’s former desk mate Ben Savage said that the real reason Reade had some of her duties removed was because she was doing a bad job at sorting constituent mail. And it looks like Biden never asked Reade to serve drinks at a fundraiser because Biden liked to go home on the train instead of staying in D.C., Biden made sure the men would be the ones serving the drinks because he didn’t want the women to be doing menial tasks, and there was an office policy that staffers couldn’t work on fundraising events. Reade’s troubles grew when it was revealed that she lied about her credentials when she was testifying as an expert against perpetrators of sexual violence. That could end up causing dozens of cases to be reviewed and the verdicts of those cases have a chance of being overturned due to Reade’s factual inaccuracies.
Then there was a short lived allegation from Eva Murry that Biden told her she was well endowed at the Gridiron dinner in 2008. It looked like a valid allegation given that there were multiple friends of Murry that backed up her claim. But then that claim fell apart when it came out that Biden was never at the Gridiron dinner that year because he was recovering from deviated septum surgery. Even when her aunt, Biden’s former Senate opponent Christine O’Donnell, tried to vouch for niece Eva, it still wasn’t credible. Christine tried to claim it was actually in 2007 when it happened, but it turned out that Biden wasn’t at that dinner either because he was campaigning in Iowa.
If it wasn’t for the in depth reporting, this could have ruined Biden’s campaign But there’s always one name that comes up when people think about the allegations against Joe Biden; Al Franken. That’s because a lot of Democrats don’t want someone to be forced out again over allegations alone. Despite happening over 2 years ago, the situation that led to Franken resigning from the Senate still leaves a wound in the minds of Progressives. And those allegations never received the same level of scrutiny that Biden’s received.
When Franken’s scandal came out, there was a rapid fire rate of new allegations and they never received the scrutiny that one allegation alone would have gotten. People only judged that he was guilty judging by the first picture and not from the details of the stories that were given. When new stories came out, they became proof to others that Franken had to be guilty based on the amount of accusations. Yet those accusations were mostly just repeated and not investigated.
The only mainstream journalist that made an attempt to investigate the allegations was Jane Mayer. Jane Mayer did a remarkable job of dissecting Tweeden’s account and proved that most of her allegations against Franken were misleading or straight up false. Yet when Mayer published her story in the New Yorker, there were many detractors who believed that Mayer went off the deep end defending the sexual predator who had at least 8 people come forward against him. It does raise the question why? Why would someone like Jane Mayer who is one of the most prominent investigative journalists in the country, who wrote about the Anita Hill hearings, who got NY Dem Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to resign hours after publishing sexual assault allegations against him from four accusers, would actually write a lengthy piece defending someone accused of sexual assault? Yet when looking over the circumstances of Franken’s case, it looks a lot more like a fringe outlier rather than the norm for an alleged sexual predator in a position of power that it deserves a second glance.
There are a few things that separate Franken’s allegations from other major #metoo predators:
- There were no independent sources such as eyewitnesses mentioned in the allegation articles that were interviewed and corroborated the accusers’ accounts. Just dependent sources who were told about the incidents afterwards.
- The reports of other #MeToo predators (Weinstein, Rose) took over 6 months of research to corroborate everything. Franken’s first allegation and later resignation happened in a span of 3 weeks.
- All but one of the incidents occurred in public places with other people nearby such as the victim’s friends and family, instead of private areas like a hotel room or house.
- Even though Franken had power over their careers, none of Franken’s senate staffers or SNL castmates made accusations against him. The 2 staffer allegations against him were from before he became a Senator and they worked for someone else.
- Despite having a substantial amount of allegations, Franken’s allegations weren’t all initially published in a huge story from a reputable news source. They started from a radio station and allegations started to drip in from other online sources. Only the 9th allegation was published in an article for New York Magazine, yet there are still peculiarities about it.
The 3 other pictures that were given by everyone but Tweeden (who likely fabricated her story) are ambiguous and don’t directly show sexual assault. Accuser 3 and 9 both said pictures were taken when Franken groped them, but they never provided the pictures.
When people try to defend the fact that Al Franken was forced out of the Senate, the most common defense is that there were 7 (now 8) other accusers besides Tweeden which must mean that Franken is guilty. Claims that Mayer glossed over the other 7 accusations at the time don’t ring true upon closer inspection. Mayer reached out to all of the accusers and gave them a chance to voice their story. Mayer managed to get statements from the 7th, and 8th accusers and put them in her article while the other women declined. Mayer focused on the stories where she could dig deeper and expose information not already available and did everything she could to find out everything relevant she could about each accuser.
While Mayer’s main focus for her article was about the first accusation from Leanne Tweeden, it would have been fruitful to try and go over all the allegations and how meticulously the reporters tried to verify their stories. Because once you do so, it becomes a lot clearer that there were too many journalistic failures when it came to fact checking the stories and failing to ask skeptical questions that it undermines the idea that Al Franken intentionally acted hostile towards these women. The stories more progressively unbelievable once scrutiny is applied.
Accuser #2 Stephanie Menz
Stephanie Menz claimed to CNN that when she went to the Minnesota State Fair, she had her picture taken with Franken and she claimed that he groped her butt during the shot.
Why it strains credibility:
A. The actual photo doesn’t show the grope
Unlike the photo Tweeden gave that caused a huge stir, this one doesn’t actually show any groping since Franken’s arms and her torso aren’t visible at all.
B. Franken apparently groped her in front of her husband, 3 feet away, which is crazy
The man who took the photo was Lindsay’s husband Jeremy and he was staring right at Franken and Lindsay from a few feet away. Why would Franken think it would be safe to grope a man’s wife when her husband was looking right at him? Conveniently, Franken disappeared before the husband could confront him. But the building in question was the WCCO radio building and at the time it had a guard rail which meant Franken had less freedom to move.
So how could Franken, who was a highly visible person in Minnesota at that point, suddenly disappear?
C. Her 2010 Facebook post claiming that Franken molested her was never actually shown.
One piece of written evidence that could strongly back up Menz’s case was the Facebook post she wrote to her sister claiming that Franken molested her. But instead of actually showing it to CNN and others, MJ Lee of CNN didn’t actually show the post and stated it was visible to Menz’s Facebook friends. Okay, but why not ask Menz to either make Lee a temporary Facebook friend so that she can see the post and share a picture of the post with others, or have Menz take a screenshot of the Franken post? It’s not exactly hard to do either of those. It doesn’t make sense why Menz wouldn’t be prepared to display the Facebook post as well as the photo of her and Franken?
D. She wanted to give the story to far right news channel OANN
Right after Tweeden made her accusation, Menz tweeted out about how she wanted to get in touch with Liz Wheeler of OANN. OANN is a far right news channel that can even go to the right on Fox News on some issues. So why was a far right conspiracy theorist one of her first choices? And when Jane Mayer came to talk to her nearly 2 years later, she refused to speak with her. So why was OANN considered trustworthy while a Pulitzer prize winning journalist like Jane Mayer wasn’t?
Accuser #3
The Accusation:
The accuser claims that Franken touched her butt during a group photo with her choir. The event was the MN Women’s Political Caucus Founding Feminist Festival that was held on 6/25/07.
Problems with this story
A. There isn’t an actual photo to disseminate despite happening in a photo op.
It would have been seriously helpful to know what happened to the photo for this accusation? If one of the accusations happened during a photo op, the resulting photo should be part of the story as evidence. Even though the accuser wants to remain anonymous, it should be possible to blur out her head in the photo.
B. Knowing the accuser’s height could have made a huge difference.
The story is missing a lot of helpful details such as the woman’s height which could make a world of a difference in whether this was intentional, or an accident? That’s because Franken is only 5 foot 6 and when taking a photo with someone else, he either puts his arm around the other person’s shoulder or waist. If she was taller than him, there’s a chance he tried to put his arm around her waist and ended up accidentally touching her butt.
Accuser #4
A few months before the 2008 election, an anonymous woman was at the Loft Literary Center with two friends for a Franken fundraiser. She claimed that Franken put her arm around her waist before cupping her butt. The woman tried to excuse herself to the bathroom and Franken said he wanted to join her and the woman grabbed her friend and ran to the bathroom to avoid Franken.
Why it strains credibility:
1. The Timing makes no sense
This allegedly happened in Fall of 2008, which would have been the stupidest possible time for Franken to do something like this. He was in the middle of the closest Senate Election in Minnesota history. If a sexual assault incident happened then, it would have made the front page of the Star Tribune and would have sunk Franken’s election prospects against Norm Coleman.
2. The reporter, Zach Roth, makes no mention of vetting the accusation with the Loft Literary Center.
This sounds weird at first, but it becomes more apparent when you take into account usual reporting practices of getting a comment from a person or organization.
There’s no indication that Roth called the Loft Literary Center in his article to verify the event happened given that he never stated if they were reached for comment. My source called the Loft and they stated they don’t have records of fundraisers from that far back.
3. There’s ZERO confirmation that Roth contacted the two eyewitnesses before Publishing the allegation.
This is the biggest red flag of all. Roth claims there were two friends that were with the accuser who were eyewitnesses to the incident. But there’s no mention at all that that they were contacted to corroborate the allegation in the article. The co-reporter who wrote about another accusation in that same article mentioned that she contacted friends of her accuser to corroborate the story, yet there’s no mention in Roth’s article of him contacting the eyewitnesses for his story. It makes no sense why Roth wouldn’t mention that he contacted the eyewitnesses and they corroborated the story because it would give his story a lot more credibility.
This wasn’t even the only time he failed to mention the eyewitnesses. When he made a rebuttal to Jane Mayer’s investigative piece about Franken’s accusations, Roth brought up the allegation he reported on. But he STILL didn’t mention whether or not he actually contacted the eyewitnesses, which would have blown a huge hole in Jane Mayer’s story. Why would you hold back that you contacted eyewitnesses that saw and confirmed what happened when that would seriously help your case?
4. Roth later admits that the allegation came from a friend of his
In the rebuttal he made to Jane Mayer, Roth mentioned that the accuser was a friend of his in this quote:
I reiterated to her a key point that I had also noted in the HuffPost report: that the woman, a friend of mine, told the story to me and several other people years before the 2017 birth of the Me Too movement. (For what it’s worth, I also told Mayer that I know the woman to be credible, trustworthy, and serious minded.)
That really doesn’t make his allegation more credible and in fact does the opposite. There’s an old saying in journalism; “If your mother tells you she loves you, verify it”. Admitting that the accuser was a friend opens up the possibility that there was bias in his reporting. And even if he did find her trustworthy, why didn’t he think it was necessary to get statements from the other eyewitnesses? The fiasco from Eva Murry’s accusations against Joe Biden proves that even if you’re certain that something happened years ago and others were told about it, that doesn’t mean that it actually happened.
Accuser 5: Stephanie Kemplin
Stephanie Kemplin was an MP that served in Kuwait in 2003. She got her picture taken with Franken during his appearance at a USO show in December, 2003. Kemplin said that Franken reached around her body and cupped her right breast for 5–10 seconds before turning when the picture was taken. Kemplin reportedly sobbed on the phone recalling the experience when she was being interviewed by a CNN reporter (most likely MJ Lee) and said “I was in a war zone… You were on a USO tour — are you trying to boost the morale of the troops or are you trying to boost your own?” she said. “I just feel so sorry for that young girl in that picture.”
Kemplin goes into detail about how she was previously sexually assaulted by a specialist in the unit and the subsequent investigation stated that while the specialist used “totally irresponsible behavior”, it resulted in no disciplinary action for her assaulter and she was blamed for the assaulter’s actions. CNN saw the documents of the investigation Kemplin had so there is no reason to doubt that it happened. However, there are a few aspects of the story about Franken that differentiate it from the other accusations.
A. Kemplin’s photo doesn’t prove her claim
Outside of Tweeden’s accusation that was filled with falsehoods, this is the only allegation where Franken is accused of groping a woman’s breast. That shows a much clearer intent that Franken was trying to get sexual gratification compared to another act that could have been considered to be an accident like touching a woman’s butt since a woman could clearly see what was happening. Yet the photo provided to CNN by Kemplin doesn’t show Franken grabbing her breast which CNN admits. Unlike the photos provided by Stephanie Menz and Tina Dupuy, Franken’s hand is perfectly clear and it is on her back. Franken’s height is around 5’7” and doesn’t have long arms. So it doesn’t make sense that Franken could reach around and grab her breast.
B. Kemplin’s contradicted herself about what she wanted Franken to do
Kemplin made contradictory accounts of what she wants to see happen to Franken. She said that she forgives him and that she doesn’t want Franken to lose his job. She specifically stated “”I’m not here to be vindictive, I’m not here to ask him to resign, even for him to apologize to me,” she said. “I’m speaking out because what he did was wrong. What he did was wrong, but I do forgive him. I don’t need him to say sorry for me to forgive him.”
But that opinion changed drastically over the span of one week when Franken resigned. Kemplin then stated after Franken resigned that he needed to resign. It’s hard to think of a reason why she would change her mind like that? It’s possible that she was appalled by hearing that there were still more accusers against Franken, but none of the accounts that came after her in the last week were similar to what she experienced with Franken.
C. There’s next to zero chance Franken could have smelled of alcohol like Kemplin claimed.
There’s a small detail in the Cincinatti article she was interviewed in that can be seen as eyebrow raising upon further inspection. Kemplin claimed that she could remember Franken smelling like liquor. She says 2 days later that she thought she smelled alcohol on his breath. That’s absurd for 2 reasons.
The first reason portends to Franken’s history with alcohol. Franken has been married to his wife Franni since 1975 and she struggled from alcohol dependence for decades starting from postpartum depression when their son Joe was born in the 1980’s. Being by his wife’s side while she was recovering and being part of al-anon, the organization for family members of alcoholics, had a huge influence on Franken’s career as it was part of the inspiration for his Stuart Smalley character. It was also part of the inspiration for the movie Franken co-wrote When a Man Loves a Woman, about a mother trying to recover from alcoholism and how her husband handles her change in behavior. Franken is highly unlikely to be drinking after everything he’s gone through with his wife. That doesn’t mean that Franken has been celibate his entire life. Franken admitted that he used cocaine when he was writing for SNL in its early seasons and even did acid. However, he quit using after his friend John Belushi died from a drug overdose in 1982.
The second reason is the most obvious: Alcohol is completely banned in Kuwait. Anyone caught importing it can be sentenced to 10 years in jail. That rule applies to any military personnel as well. Smuggling in alcohol would have sabotaged the USO tour. In her biography of her days as a medic in Kuwait, Holly Hayne goes over what happened to a USO tour that brought in alcohol (page 56).
Interesting note, the last USO group on their way in got cancelled. Apparently they did not believe that the “no drugs, no alcohol rule, and Kuwait Law” really applied to them. Going to be really interesting.
None of this entirely disproves that Kemplin intentionally lied about her accusation and the accusation should be treated seriously. Kemplin has proven that she’s served our country honorably and deserves respect for that. She’s also proven that she was sexually abused in the military which took no disciplinary action against her abuser. It’s also stated that she did tell other people about what she said happened to her with Franken after it happened and they vouched for her claims. All of these facts would make Kemplin a credible witness who would know what she’s talking about when claiming that Franken groped her.
D. Kemplin’s photo was Edited
Unfortunately, her claim against Franken is undermined when you take a look at a larger version of the photo.
The photo above was from an NBC affiliate KSDK which was provided by Ms. Kemplin. Why does this picture matter you may ask? Take a look at the bottom portion of the photo. That red thing between them is an autograph table. It’s where celebrities would sign autographs for the troops as they came up. The original photo on CNN never showed that table which would have made a world of a difference for Kemplin’s accusation.
Instead of being closer together like it was initially believed, there was actually much more distance between them. Franken could barely reach over the table to get in close with Kemplin for the photo. He had to lean forward while she had to lean back, but the distance between them would have made breast cupping impossible for a man of Franken’s size. Kemplin claimed that Franken cupped her breast for 5–10 seconds before she turned her body and the picture was taken. That would have been impossible with this setup. If she turned her body to be facing the camera and Franken wanted to cup her breast, she would be bending over backwards and could have lost her balance and fallen down on the table.
And it appears that Kemplin knew that the table was there despite never mentioning it. On the day CNN broke the story, Kemplin did another interview with the local news station Local 12 stating this:
“I knew I wanted a picture with him,” Kemplin said. “I leaned back and he put his arm around me and his hand went between my arm and my torso and he was holding my breast.”
Why would you need to be leaning backwards if you were standing right next to someone for a photo?
E. Before talking to CNN, Kemplin talked with Leanne Tweeden
The photo raises the question of whether Kemplin or CNN edited it? If CNN and reporter MJ Lee were responsible for cropping the photo it would have been a huge breach of journalism ethics by altering the subject of the photo that was the linchpin of their news story. Looking over Kemplin’s account of what happened when she heard about the first Franken accusations, there’s one point that she mentioned to CNN that looks much more revealing in hindsight. She talked to Tweeden at least twice before she got in contact with CNN. That actually damages her credibility even more and should have been another red flag to MJ Lee.
Whenever one witness hears whatever another witness has to say, it runs the risk that the second witness might alter his or her testimony to align with what the first witness said. Sequestration was hardly possible for Franken’s accusers since all but Tweeden would have heard at least one of the accusations before reporting their own. But it’s an entirely different matter when an accuser talks to another accuser before talking to a reporter, especially if the original accuser made misleading claims. Tweeden could have given Kemplin advice on how to appear more legitimate to CNN and how to act when she was telling her story in order to gain more credibility with the reporter so that it could cover up any omissions in her testimony.
With that information, it would make sense that Tweeden might have suggested to Kemplin to crop out the table because Tweeden was used to USO shows knew about the autograph tables. Cropping out the table could have given Kemplin’s story more credibility by removing the object that proved there was distance between Kemplin and Franken. Cropping a photo is relatively easy and can be done on any photo editing software, including for smartphones.
6th Accuser
The 6th Franken accuser was a woman who chose to remain anonymous and reported her allegation to Jezebel. She claimed that Franken invited her to be a part of his show that he was doing in her town and he gave her an open mouth kiss when the interview was over, but she turned her head to avoid it and he kissed her on the cheek. The accuser claims that she felt demeaned and put in her place by what happened. I’m actually going to admit that the kiss happened. However, everything surrounding the kiss makes it seem very likely that Franken had no malicious intent and the victim misjudged what happened. Yet the accuser was incredibly sure of her beliefs despite the problems in her story.
This allegation is harder to bring up sources for since it becomes incredibly clear who the woman accusing Franken is when you look at those sources. So I’ll do my best with what I can provide.
The problems of this accuser’s story:
A. She claimed that she felt like no one saw what happened and it felt insidious. There were over 700 people looking at Franken in the auditorium that day.
The accuser stated in Jezebel that that although they were in an extremely public place, no one noticed: “It was onstage in front of a full theater… It was insidious. It was in plain sight and yet nobody saw it.”
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When it comes to a comment like this, it’s easy to take it at face value if you were in a small gathering. But the event Franken hosted on April 28, 2006, wasn’t just a small town hall meeting. The live show was meant to be a campaign event for Bernie Sanders’ Senate campaign. Since Bernie was live in the theater, there were 700 people in the crowd. So it’s hard to believe that all 700 people in the auditorium weren’t looking at the stage and had their eyes elsewhere instead (this was before smartphones). If they were looking at the stage, they must have assumed that nothing felt out of the ordinary even if a woman was about to be kissed on stage. And if Franken was thinking about doing something malicious to her, it would be the worst possible time to do so when there were over 700 people looking at him.
B. The Accuser shopped her story around various news outlets
Jane Mayer makes it known in her story that the sixth accuser was trying to get her story out to any news outlet that would report it. She first tried the Boston Globe, but the accuser backed out of the story. The accuser then tried to take the story to Leanne Tweeden’s radio station, but they wanted her to be on the record and not be anonymous. Then the accuser managed to contact Anna Merlan of Jezebel and Anna allowed her to make her accusation anonymously.
Merlan tried to dispute that account in a rebuttal to Jane Mayer. But Merlan’s rebuttal devolves into an argument about what “on the record” means. Still, why would the accuser decide to pass on a very respected publication like the Boston Globe for a feminist blog instead? Even if you were disputing who had the bigger amount of readers, there’s little doubt that having a major newspaper be the one to break your story gives it a lot more credibility than a popular blog given all the standards newspapers have in order to make sure a story is accurate. That can’t be said of Jezebel when it comes to rape allegations.
In the past, Anna Merlan blindly accepted the Rolling Stone story about the UVA rape and insulted anyone who did not believe that it happened, mainly Robby Soave of Reason magazine. But when Rolling Stone partially retracted the story over inaccuracies they discovered, Anna had to apologize to Soave and wrote more articles about everything that was unraveling.
C. The story had no corroboration from people who actually saw what happened.
Anna Merlan wasn’t lacking in possible sources if she wanted more corroboration for her story. There were news articles written about the event and there were plenty of live guests as well. Yet the only corroboration she obtained was from the accuser’s sister and her friend, who were only told about what happened afterwards.
Was there any attempt at all to talk to the reporters at Vermont’s local newspapers that covered the event before publishing? Or guests at the event? Why did Merlan not wait until she got other opinions from people who actually saw the attempted kiss? Jane Mayer talked to a local reporter named Christain Avard who saw the kiss and said “I think it was supposed to be ‘Thank you very much,’ but it looked like a bad kiss on his part.” Why would Franken give the accuser a bad kiss that she assumed to be hostile while the reporter thought it meant thank you?
Merlan wrote about the Columbia Journalism review of the Rolling Stone story and what went wrong. The main criticisms were about how Erdely gave too much leeway to “Jackie” and how everything was written from Jackie’s point of view without reaching out to others for comment or clarification. So why didn’t Merlan try to avoid those mistakes by contacting people who were actually at the event in question? If she did, the whole context of why the kiss happened might have given her some hesitation in publishing the story.
D. The accuser was declaring the day Al Franken day.
Before she wrapped up her interview, the accuser made a declaration that the day was going to be declared Al Franken day for the town in his honor. She also presented Franken with a key to the town.
With this information, everything comes together and it makes perfect sense why nobody thought that Franken was doing anything wrong at the time. Franken was thanking her for the honors she bestowed upon him, but the kiss he gave her ended up being misinterpreted by the accuser. I mean how often does a town name a day after you?
And posting to the town bulletin board wasn’t a daily or even weekly occurrence for the accuser. She only posted on the board 10 times for the entire year. After posting about the event with Franken, she didn’t post on the board again for 6 Months! There wasn’t even any mention of Bernie Sanders at all (Even though Bernie wasn’t running for President yet, he was still the only Congressman Vermont had at the time and won his Senate election by a comfortable margin). It looks like she thought she put a lot of effort into her speech for Franken and wanted to tell others about it. Why would she post the speech if she hated how Franken made her feel “demeaned and put in her place”?
She only posted on the board 10 times for the entire year. After posting about the event with Franken, she didn’t post on the board again for 6 Months! There wasn’t even any mention of Bernie Sanders being at the event at all.
7th and 9th accusers
While it might look strange that I’m grouping 2 allegations together, both of these allegations are actually connected in a way that nobody else has ever brought up.
7th Accuser
The Accusation:
The 7th Franken accuser might have been the one that had the most impact outside of the initial allegation. It was published by Politico and the accuser was a former Democratic congressional aide which would give it more credibility in that this wasn’t a Republican trying to make something up to get Franken to step down. For a lot of Senators, this was the final straw that made them call on Franken to resign. However, there are problems with this allegation that make it difficult to consider to be in the same category as the others.
The accuser says that after Franken finished his radio interview with the accuser’s boss, the accuser’s boss left while the accuser went to collect her things. Suddenly, she turned around and Franken appeared in front of her and was between her and the door. She claims Franken tried to come at her to kiss her and that she ducked out of his way and bolted out the door. When she left, the accuser claimed that Franken said “It’s my right as an entertainer”. There were no other witnesses to the event and Politico’s corroboration was from her former colleagues who state that the accuser told them shortly after it happened.
Here’s what she said in her own words:
“He was between me and the door, and he was coming at me to kiss me. It was very quick, and I think my brain had to work really hard to be like ‘Wait, what is happening?’ But I knew whatever was happening was not right, and I ducked,” the former aide said in an interview. “I was really startled by it, and I just sort of booked it towards the door, and he said, ‘It’s my right as an entertainer.’”
There’s a lot missing from this story that could give us a better understanding of what happened. The accuser is claiming that Franken tried to kiss her solely based on what she believed were Franken’s intentions, not on the actual physical contact. If we were to judge it by physical contact, then there’s nothing that Franken did that qualified as sexual assault. There is too much room for misinterpretation since there wasn’t a physical act committed against the accuser.
A. There’s little Free Space to walk around in a Recording Studio
Let’s start with the fact that the article leaves out the specifics of the room they were in which adds a whole new wrinkle to the accusation. The accuser clearly stated they were in the recording studio for Franken’s Air America radio show. A regular recording studio for an AM radio show is compact and doesn’t have a lot of room to move around in. That’s done for the purpose of making sure that the audio in the studio is at its best quality because larger rooms have a tendency to echo which gets picked up on the broadcast. There is usually a big table that holds most of the equipment that fills up most of the room.
For example, here’s a picture of the studio for popular liberal radio host Stephanie Miller (via LA Weekly)
Now look at this video of The Breakfast Club for an example (Go to the 19 second mark for an overhead shot). That makes it a bit cumbersome and difficult to move around freely. Franken once did a live show with CSPAN in 2006 that’s still available online. Go to the 55 minute mark to get a better idea of the layout. With the narrow space in the studio, it would make sense that the only way Franken could get back to his seat was past the accuser.
B. Aspects of a Radio Studio help Franken’s case
Soundproofing is a fixture in all professional radio and recording studios. Audio can’t be echoing off the walls or the floor so the entire room needs to be fitted that no sound can enter the studio while completely minimizing all possible sound the microphone could pick up. Soundproofing the floor is vital to maintaining great quality sound since there are a lot of sounds the microphone can pick up from the floor, such as footsteps or a rolling chair. The accuser makes it sound like Franken had malicious intent by appearing in front of her face when she had her back turned. But when you take into account the soundproof floor, it appears that Franken was trying to get back to his seat while walking on the soundproof floor and the staffer didn’t hear him approaching when she had her back turned.
A radio studio also has conjoining rooms for the sound engineers and technicians. They’re always in close proximity to the DJ and can be in the same room or in a separate room looking in through the window. That raises the question of where were they in this incident? It doesn’t make sense that they would miss something like this or the idea that they wouldn’t be a factor in this story. When he was broadcasting his show from Minnesota, Franken’s sound engineer was 10 feet away from him and was looking straight at him during a taping of his show. Wouldn’t he or she have been a witness to what happened?
C. There was virtually no Physical Contact
But there’s another problem that cuts straight through the accusation, namely that there was no physical contact. Franken was in the way of her exit, but there was no indication it was intentional given that she was able to get out of the studio in a matter of seconds. She made no mention of Franken trying to tell her to stop, grab her, or follow after her. Just that he was briefly in the way. But that by itself isn’t exactly illegal or improper behavior. Even though Politico used the word “pursued” in its first paragraph to describe what happened, there’s nothing in the story to suggest that Franken followed after her when she left the studio.The entire allegation rests on what she believed was going to happen next instead of what actually happened. While there are undoubtedly forms of sexual harassment and assault that don’t require physical contact (making explicit sexual suggestions or threats to an employee, exposing yourself to another person, taking unwanted sexual photos of others, etc) you’d be hardpressed to make a case that what happened in this allegation was objectively sexual assault after looking at the specifics.
She made no mention of Franken trying to tell her to stop, grab her, or follow after her. Just that he was briefly in the way. But that by itself isn’t exactly illegal or improper behavior.
The only thing that makes this sound like sexual assault was the accuser claiming that Franken said to her “It’s my right as an entertainer”. However, this is one of the few times where Franken actually denied the allegation instead of apologizing. Unlike his apologies for most of the cases, Franken seems to remember the day of the allegation a lot more clearly given that he was doing a lot for someone who was prominent in Congress.
There were other parts of the story that were omitted from Politico’s piece that would have made things easier to understand. For example, we were never told where the interview happened in the first place? It would make sense that it would be in Franken’s studio in Minnesota, but most Congressmen and Senators wouldn’t appear in person on Franken’s radio show and would just phone in for an interview given that Minnesota was pretty far out of the way for most Senators and Congress was usually in session when the interviews took place. The Congressman in question is never mentioned in the Politico article in order to preserve the accuser’s identity.
Accuser №9
Before going further into the 7th accuser, the story for the 9th accuser needs to be discussed because both stories are actually related to each other (disclosure, while I do know the name of the 7th and 9th accusers, it won’t be revealed in order to preserve their choice to remain anonymous). This account was separate from the initial 8 and the accuser waited around 2 years before making her accusation.
The Accusation
The 9th accuser worked for Senator Patty Murray during an event she was holding in 2006 where Franken was the guest speaker. Murray said “Let’s take the picture” and Franken put her hand on her butt for the duration of the picture and then he asked to take another one and he gave her “a little squeeze” on her butt during the next picture. She later says that she’s worried that speaking out will hinder any future career paths for her, which is a valid reason for not speaking out on any occasion. But that doesn’t mean her story doesn’t have some problems.
D. This story was anonymous despite 23 other women publicly sharing their stories of sexual assault in the same article that this allegation appeared in.
Some details about this story strike me as odd. The story originally appeared in NY Magazine’s The Cut which focused on 25 stories from people who were sexually abused or harassed by powerful men. However, there were only two stories in that article where the victim wasn’t publicly identified with the Franken account being one of them. Women from all types of backgrounds and tax brackets allowed themselves’ to be publicly identified. The only other woman who remained anonymous did so because she was an undocumented immigrant and was afraid of being deported if she revealed her identity. That doesn’t apply to this woman who is facing no imminent legal ramifications for publicly identifying herself and telling her story. It makes little sense why this woman was allowed to have her story published for this article while not having to be publicly identified? The only reason that comes to mind for me is that the woman doesn’t want to jeopardize her current career. But it feels like the article’s authors ceded too much ground by allowing her to remain anonymous while so many women in the article decided to talk publicly about what they experienced, which tended to be a lot worse.
But she also went over how the incident affected her:
“At the time of the incident, I think, I’m going to go to law school. All I want to do is run for office in my home state. This created a moment of reflection on like, Who the hell do you think you are? There is something that tells men that they, particularly those who have a lot of power, that they have access to my body in some way that is based on the hierarchy of the organization that we’re working in or society or whatever it is. My anger wasn’t directed toward him. It was more like, How audacious am I to think I could do anything? It rocked my confidence. As I look back on my career, I am always in deputy roles and support roles.”
This…does not seem to make a lot of sense. She’s saying that the incident with Franken made her lose her self esteem, and implies that she hates her career path because of it. However, I’ve seen her LinkedIn profile and it’s anything but plain and ordinary. She got a Masters Degree at one of the most elite universities in Europe, then a series of jobs in Washington that would make anyone envious. And Franken had no power over her career at the time since he wasn’t an elected official, so how was he an entrenched member of the patriarchy? Now obviously, I can’t read minds and I can’t understand everything a woman would feel while being in a really bad situation. Yet the amount of blame she seems to put on that incident for her current status in life feels overblown. I really don’t know if it was necessary for The Cut to include that quote in their piece?
E. She claimed Franken groped her when Patty Murray was next to her…which is insane for Franken to do.
There’s also one detail of this story that really stretches the story’s credibility. According to the victim, she said that her boss, Senator Patty Murray, was right next to her and said she wanted to take a picture when the incident took place. Since this function took place in 2006, Franken was seriously planning to run for Senate in Minnesota and obviously knew who Patty Murray was and her influence in the Democratic caucus. That raises the question why would Franken intentionally grope another woman’s butt, who happened to be working for a powerful Democratic Senator, within standing distance of that female Democrat Senator? It would be incredibly risky and borderline crazy since he would be forced to rely on the woman not acting out when it happened in order to keep it secret. If Patty Murray saw and heard what happened, Franken would have likely lost support from the Democratic Party for his Senate bid. The election was still two and a half years away so the Democratic Party could have easily gotten another candidate.
The exact date or the name of the event wasn’t stated in the article, but it was easy to find because there was only one major event where Franken was with Patty Murray in 2006. That would be the Golden Tennis Shoe awards on April 10. Murray created the event because she said one of the moments that galvanized her to start a political career was when she was dismissed by an elected official as being a “mom in tennis shoes”.
So now let’s turn back to the 7th accuser who was a female Congressional aide. But it turns out it was never a Congressman she was working for because Jane Mayer revealed that the 7th accuser actually worked for a Senator. Since it was unlikely that the Senator was interviewed by Al when he was in Minnesota, my associate John Mashey made a chart of all the times Franken interviewed an elected official outside of Minnesota that wasn’t an event with an audience.
There was only one Senator that fit the bill and it was Patty Murray. And the day that she sat for a radio interview with Franken was on April 10, 2006 (page 28 if the link doesn’t load on April 10)
See where I’m going with this?
Both the 7th and 9th accusers worked for Patty Murray and both incidents happened ON THE SAME DAY!
I managed to confirm via the State of the Senate report from that year that both of the accusers accrued travel expenses for going to the same area in Washington state.
At first glance, you would think that I just sabotaged myself and have given proof that Franken had a serious problem with groping women. But on the contrary, nothing about it makes sense when you consider the dynamics of what was going on. Al wanted to run for Senate and he knew that both of the women worked for Patty Murray and they had her ear. So why would Franken think he could get away with trying to sexually assault two women that he knew both worked for Senator Patty Murray on the same day? Franken had no power over those staffers and he couldn’t threaten them with anything.
So why would Franken think he could get away with trying to sexually assault two women that he knew both worked for Senator Patty Murray on the same day?
If anything, the staffers had all the power in that situation if they had spoken up to Murray about the incident earlier. Murray would have easily taken her staffers’ word over Franken’s. All it would take would be one of them spilling the beans to Murray and Franken’s political career would have been over before it began. Franken would have been insane to cause a major incident at Murray’s prized Golden Tennis Shoes event and it makes no sense why he would think he could get away with it?
The incidents in these two cases had to have been accidents since it makes no sense otherwise. But even if it was an accident, that still wouldn’t sit well with the 7th accuser who said this to Jane Mayer.
Not long ago, I asked the woman if she thought that Franken had been making a sexual advance or a clumsy thank-you gesture. “Is there a difference?” she replied. “If someone tries to do something to you unwanted?” From her standpoint, because she was at work–a professional woman deserving respect — his intentions didn’t matter.
The answer is yes, the incident being an accident makes a world of a difference. And without realizing the difference between the two, some people are punished unfairly and it makes people believe #MeToo has gotten out of hand.
8th Accuser Tina Dupuy.
Accusation:
Tina Dupuy claimed that Franken put his arm around her waist and grabbed “a handful of flesh” for a picture she took at a Media Matters Obama inauguration party in 2009. She made this statement about how she felt.
It shrunk me. It’s like I was no longer a person, only ornamental. It said, “You don’t matter — and I do.” He wanted to cop a feel and he demonstrated he didn’t need my permission.
Even though this has been grouped together with the other allegations against Franken, this is probably the most demonstrably false allegation where Dupuy clearly embellished her feelings at the time.
A. Her blog posts and tweets said nothing but positive things for Franken after the incident
Even though the incident had just happened, Dupuy didn’t sound like she had any problem with Franken when she wrote about it on her blog. This is the blog post she made right after the incident happened.
SATURDAY, JAN 17
FBLA Meets Al Franken…and Other Politicos
We got to take a picture (a crappy one from an iPhone) with soon-to-be Senator-Elect Al Franken at the Media Matters party.
And yeah, we are totally stoked about that. So suck it.
We also met (and got our picture taken with — but we’ll spare you the grainy horrible photo) political consultant and former President Bill Clinton adviser Paul Begala.
Plus we talked with Christopher Hayes the Washington editor of The Nation and frequent guest of Keith Olbermann on Countdown…mainly about Al Franken.
Tina admitted that her own photo of Franken was crappy, and yet she decided to post it as proof that Franken did something inappropriate to her. She couldn’t stop talking about Franken and how stoked she was for him. None of this is inline with her description of feeling diminished by what happened. There are also the tweets she made about Franken after he was sworn into office.
None of the things she wrote sounds like a woman that was diminished by her experience with Franken. Why did it take so long for her to change her mind?
B. Other photos from that time don’t back up her personal space claims
Dupuy claimed that she didn’t even let her own husband touch her like Franken did. Yet she didn’t seem to mind Karl Frisch touching her waist.
C. Dupuy later downplayed her story.
When she was confronted about her account, Dupuy seemed to tone down the severity of what she experienced.
I was clarifying he was a creep. I didn’t say what happened to me was horrible. I don’t feel secure about my body and don’t want people touching me without permission,” she said. (In the photo, she has her arm across Franken’s back; his hand is not visible.) She added that she wanted to speak out on behalf of the other accusers. “I would have never said anything, but I was the corroborating witness for seven other women.””
Dupuy stated in her article “It shrunk me. It’s like I was no longer a person, only ornamental. It said, “You don’t matter — and I do.” But now she claims it wasn’t horrible despite the description she gave? And the idea that she doesn’t want people to touch her without her permission sounds a bit hypocritical after an eyewitness gave his account of the incident.
Dupuy told me that, despite her apparent excitement at the time, it had been an upsetting encounter; Franken, she said, had squeezed her waist in a creepy way for several seconds. “It wasn’t violent rape,” she acknowledged. “But it was, like, ‘Ick!’ ” She told the press that, at the time, she had put on weight, and felt uneasy about her body. A. J. Goodman, who was with Franken when the photograph was taken, said, “She asked for the picture, put her arm around his shoulder — what was he supposed to do? How’s he supposed to know how she feels? He’s not a mind reader.”
If you put your arm around someone without asking for permission, there’s an impression that you’re okay with mild forms of body contact and wouldn’t mind if someone did the same thing to you. And Franken had absolutely no idea she had gained weight and felt uncomfortable about her body. So how was he supposed to know that he hurt her feelings? All of this points to Dupuy grossly exaggerating her story. Why The Atlantic thought she deserved to write an entire article with little to no vetting is something I’m never going to understand.
Looking everything over, it becomes more and more likely that there was nothing substantive that could prove Al Franken is some sort of sexual deviant. The amount of risk involved in groping a woman’s butt while in public is too high. It makes no sense why Franken would limit butt groping to public events and photo shoots when people would be looking at him? It looks more and more likely that the stories for each accuser were rushed out before they could be properly vetted. The reporter for every story seems to have made no attempt to go beyond who the accuser told them would back up their story and didn’t try to find any independent sources. For every allegation, I see 2 people at the most other than the accuser being interviewed with those people always being friends or family members (in one case, an ex-boyfriend). Tara Reade’s accusations prove that relying solely on friends, neighbors, and family as sources isn’t the best method of verification.
BelieveWomen and Believeallwomen sounded great on paper since it meant that people that suffered from sexual harassment and sexual assault could finally have their stories heard and feel like things would change. But the notion of believing all women ends up being an absolutist principle where an allegation means an instant guilty sentence. As shown with Biden, multiple allegations doesn’t necessarily mean multiple credible allegations. Every allegation needs to be seriously investigated and vetted, even when the evidence is scarce. Or else people like Al Franken will be undeservedly pilloried and have their entire life ruined without getting the proper investigation they were asking for.
