Former Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., said in an interview on Thursday that he "didn’t get due process" before he resigned from the Senate in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations in 2017.
Franken, who denied the allegations, resigned in January 2018 after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. He told Washington Post Live on Thursday that media outlets failed to immediately investigate the claims against him.
"No one investigated this. No one at The Washington Post investigated it. No one at The New York Times investigated — no one did any investigation of this at all. And I had 36 of my colleagues demand that I leave, and I didn't get due process," Franken said. "And it was a pretty awful experience for me and my family."
He also made reference to an article in The New Yorker from July 2019 that examined some of the allegations made by the conservative talk show host Leeann Tweeden, who claimed that Franken added a scene with kissing to a sketch that they were going to perform together and touched her without consent.
The former senator denied her claims, and some women who spoke to The New Yorker said that the scene was devised before Tweeden was involved.
Franen also said in an interview with the Post podcast "Capehart" earlier this week that he found the idea of running for office again "tempting," and suggested that he could launch another campaign "at some point" in the future.
"I don’t know," he said. "I certainly loved my time in the Senate. I loved the job. I got a lot done. I was able to accomplish things I couldn’t accomplish anywhere else, I don’t think. So yeah, it would be tempting to try to do that again."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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