I’m not defending Al Franken’s alleged sexual harassment of Leeann Tweeden in 2006, but why have so many Democrats and most of the media avoided discussion of the possible role of a sleazy Trump operative in disseminating the story?
Franken deserves condemnation for his behavior, at least as evidenced by the photo that emerged from the incident that shows him pretending to grope a seemingly sleeping Tweeden.
But all of this still raises the question, how and why did Roger Stone, the longtime political dirty trickster and Trump campaign advisor, know before the rest of the public that this information was coming out about Franken?
In case anyone missed it (and apparently a lot have), a Twitter account linked to Stone tweeted last week that it was about to be “Al Franken’s ‘time in the barrel’. Franken next in long list of Democrats to be accused of ‘grabby’ behavior…”
The tweet came hours before Tweeden claimed in a post on the 790 KABC Newstalk blogsite that that Franken had kissed and groped her during a USO Tour in December 2006.
The talk radio station later issued a statement that they had “tipped off some of our news partners” to Tweeden’s revelations the day before, but that “none of us involved in the decision on when to go public coordinated with any group, campaign or individuals outside of the news industry.” So, how did Roger Stone get wind of it?
This is the same Roger Stone who similarly proclaimed last year, in almost exactly the same terms, that Wikileaks was going to be releasing damaging information on Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta. Stone has lately been questioned by the House Intelligence Committee about possible collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russians. He is presumably a target of Special Counsel Robert Mueller for the same reason.
Tweeden herself has often appeared on the Fox News show of Trump-booster Sean Hannity, and Hannity, of course, had her on the same day her post ran to discuss the Franken incident. Before interviewing Tweeden, Hannity, who has been a staunch supporter of Republican Senate candidate and accused pedophile Roy Moore, called for Franken to resign from the Senate.
All of this at least raises questions whether the release and dissemination of the information on Franken was coordinated and may have served as a diversion not only from the Moore case, but from ongoing political battles in which the Trump administration is involved such as the tax reform debate. Trump himself immediately joined in the Twitter pile-on on Franken, forgetting, of course, his own sexual harassment history. He has been virtually silent on Moore.
There actually has been coverage by CBS News of the Stone connection to the allegations against Franken, yet I have still found no references to that connection on Huffington Post or Politico. DailyKos is apparently one of the few Democratic sites that has tried to shed some light on the Stone role in the dissemination of the allegations against Franken.
Franken himself has endorsed an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee of his behavior, but Tweeden is now saying she accepts Franken’s apology and an investigation isn’t necessary. Why not? Shouldn’t all of this be investigated?
Perhaps more importantly, why the silence from the media and the Democrats about the Roger Stone connection and its implications in this matter?
Too late Dave. I don’t want to pile on, but Franken’s statement (the second one) pretty much acknowledges the episode. Yes there;s suspicion about how it got out there, but he never denied the broad outlines of what she said.
JimC, I think you’ve missed the point of my post.
No, I see your point. The problem is that all this stuff came out after Al said this:
For instance, that picture. I don’t know what was in my head when I took that picture, and it doesn’t matter. There’s no excuse. I look at it now and I feel disgusted with myself. It isn’t funny. It’s completely inappropriate. It’s obvious how Leeann would feel violated by that picture. And, what’s more, I can see how millions of other women would feel violated by it—women who have had similar experiences in their own lives, women who fear having those experiences, women who look up to me, women who have counted on me.
JimC, I agree with what you are saying about Franken’s statements, but those statements are not the point of my post. The ;post is about the apparent involvement of an individual in the Trump campaign in a potentially coordinated effort to widely disseminate the charges against Franken.
Whether Tweeden’s accusations are true is not relevant to the argument I’m trying to make about collusion.
My point is that this case is reminiscent of the alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians who hacked into the DNC. Trump and his allies have tried to argue falsely that it doesn’t matter that the Russians were hacking into an American political party’s computers because the information they got was important for the public to know..
What bothers me is the attempt by some to find equivalence between what Franken did and what Roy Moore is accused of.
I think the false equivalence between what Franken did and what Moore is accused of is exactly what the Trump allies and Moore supporters want to promote. The more they can muddy the waters with hyped-up charges in response to the serious accusations against Moore and Trump himself, the more they think they will get away with.
That, to me, provides a plausible motive for engaging in a coordinated effort to tarnish Franken. Even if Tweeden’s accusations are true, that does not excuse collusion involving people associated with Trump, media outlets, and who knows who else in disseminating that information.
I’m trying really hard to follow Charley’s request to keep posts short, wry, and local. That said, I’m of the opinion he should resign. I think we are seeing a great and long needed cultural shift in how society views harassment and a house cleaning is in order. Congresswoman Jackie Spier has already come forward saying she’s been harassed, as a member (!), by Democrats and Republicans alike.
I went to a stand up show on Saturday with friends who are part of that community and all the attendees under 40 said he should resign. Period. What Franken and CK did silenced women and stunted careers. It’s inexcusable.
Franken’s second apology was far better, but resigning demonstrates he’s truly contrite and wants to empower female voices. Notably the two women running for Governor in MNDFL have asked for him to resign, along with the chairs of the legislative feminist caucus. It’ll be interesting to see how Klobuchar reacts.
We don’t need to compare it to Moore to ask our side to be held to a higher standard of zero tolerance. No powerful male leader, no matter how liberal they pretend to be in public life, can be allowed to demean women behind closed doors ever again. That’s my standard. It’s something I feel strongly about as someone related to and friends with dozens of women who’ve been harassed at all walks of life. I’m not debating it.
I expect that kind of absolute moralism from the Right. My only response to your suggestion is NO! NO! NO! in the most emphatic terms, especially since in Franken’s case there does not seem to be much there there. We have nothing to prove except that we can be the party of discernment and your solution is just asking for a witch hunt. In order for the worst accusations to mean anything we must be able to tell the differences: between adult and minor victims; between a one-off and a pattern; between apologies and doubling down;; between comments and physical contact or exposure; between hugging/kissing (even if not welcome) and grabbing someone the way Trump bragged about; between honoring a request to stop and plowing ahead anyway; between years ago and more contemporary; and yes, between those in public life for whom the preponderance of the record demonstrates respect for and empowerment of women and those who come across thinking they should be barefoot and pregnant. Franken is a model of how an accused person should behave despite the fact that there isn’t a lot to the accusations and speculation regarding political motivations. I know people of both genders who are, shall we say, very friendly. I know people of both genders whose tolerance for receiving such affections runs the gamut. We need to be able to set and respect boundaries, but not necessarily make a federal case out of every incident.
Blaming Roger Stone, like blaming the Washington Post, is just a distraction.
And here’s the second accusation.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/20/politics/al-franken-inappropriate-touch-2010/index.html
“According to Menz, she attended the Minnesota State Fair with her husband and father in the summer of 2010, almost two years after Franken was elected to the Senate. Her father’s small business was sponsoring a local radio booth, and she spent the day meeting various elected officials, political candidates and celebrities and taking photos with them as they stopped by the booth.
When Franken walked in, Menz and her husband, who also spoke with CNN, said they recognized him right away. Menz said she had a brief and cordial exchange with the senator.
Then, as her husband held up her phone and got ready to snap a photo of the two of them, Franken “pulled me in really close, like awkward close, and as my husband took the picture, he put his hand full-fledged on my rear,” Menz said. “It was wrapped tightly around my butt cheek.””
Is there ever just one?
Nope. That’s why he should resign now before it gets worse.
I absolutely agree. Nothing alleged so far rises anywhere near the level of Weinstein or Roy Moore, so he can likely have a productive career of good works after apologizing, resigning, and seeking redemption. I don’t think he is a bad man (my caveat that I may adjust that opinion based on further evidence) but the culture has to change and it has to change with accountability for actions like this. He doesn’t have to go to prison, but he should leave the Senate.
I was gonna say, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop on Franken. One incident, hmmm … you figured there might be more.
Glenn Thrush now too. 😑
What I think has gotten lost in this discussion is the point I was trying to make in my post, which was that all of this really isn’t about Franken. It’s about the coordinated effort by the Trump campaign and its allies in the media to target Dems and accuse them of everything they’ve been accused of.
Maybe I wasn’t clear in trying to make that point in the post. Here’s a better effort to make that point from DailyKos: Franken is not the Target: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/18/1716807/-Franken-isn-t-the-target
Of course it is a “coordinated effort,” he is a politician and there is blood in the water. The accusations against Moore are also a coordinated effort.
The problem is that the allegations are true, and there are already two, and probably more coming.
It is disappointing because Franken was a good Senator, and seemed like a ray of hope. But he hit the iceberg hard, and is sinking fast, and there isn’t much to be done about it.
I disagree that there is an equivalence between the criticisms of Moore and the effort to smear Franken. In the Franken case, information was leaked to a Trump operative before it was made generally public, and that operative bragged that there is more to come against Democrats.
There also appears to have been involvent by right-wing media outlets like Sean Hannity in smearing Franken, in particular, as a means of defending Roy Moore.
.
More importantly, the episode parallels the apparent collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians to rig an entire presidential election..
What media sources coordinated with Democrats to smear Moore? Is there any credible evidence of that?
Any expose on a candidate weeks before an election has to be viewed with suspicion. If nobody has done opposition research on Moore I would be very surprised. And disappointed.
Rove’s MO was different. The Rove backed candidate would be attacked, but at a critical point the attack would be debunked, and Rove’s “smeared ” candidate would benefit.
There is plenty of false equivalence, but not with regard to sexual misconduct.
One of the Trump Russia tweeters I follow (no, not Louise Mensch) suggested that Russia was behind the claims. The guy is a conservative, though there are liberal RussiaTrumpers pushing the same idea.
Roger Stone was their evidence, Given the lack of direct or circumstantial supporting evidence, I dismissed the contention, unless more evidence came forward. Tweeden’s network, however, had given out the information ahead of publication and lots of people knew about it. Stone didn’t need Russia to get the information ahead of time. Menz’s revelation would seem to suggest Russia is beside the point.
I’m not saying Russia is necessarily involved here. But the questions raised by Tweeden’s allegations include who knew about them beforehand and what were their intentions. It seems a little more than coincidental that Roger Stone was one of the people who knew beforehand, and Stone more than hinted in his tweet at a coordinated effort to use information like this against Democrats.
Maybe we’ve gotten completely inured to the blurred lines that exist today between the media and political sphere, but when you say Stone didn’t need Russia to get the information ahead of time, it would seem to imply there’s nothing wrong in the way he got that information.
But if there really was nothing wrong in someone like Stone learning about the allegations before Tweeden went public with them, why did Tweeden’s radio network feel the need to put out a statement denying any coordinated effort with any “group, campaign, or individuals outside of the news industry?” If that were the case, how did Stone get the information?
The DailyKos post I linked to in my comment above lays out a good case that, in fact, Trump and his allies in the media and elsewhere are engaged in a coordinated campaign. To me, that raises a lot of questions about abuse of power.
Dirty tricks. That’s what Stone is known for. His involvement should raise flags, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. The leak could have come from anywhere. FWIW, The station’s answer is here:
A Los Angeles radio station is pushing back on reports that former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone appeared to know sexual misconduct allegations involving Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) were coming hours before they were made public.
In a statement Friday, KABC said a “very small group” of employees discussed the best day for host Leeann Tweeden to come forward with her account of being forcibly kissed and groped by Franken in 2006.
The station says it informed “some of our news partners so they could prepare to cover what we knew was a very significant story.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/360921-la-radio-station-we-tipped-off-news-partners-before-publishing
Okay, I’m glad someone here on BMG is acknowledging that Roger Stone’s involvement in the dissemination of the allegations against Franken at least raises flags. The silence from Democrats on this issue is disheartening to me.
Sure, Stone’s involvement might not mean anything, but I think there is a lot of evidence that it does mean something. This is the same guy who knew beforehand that Wikileaks was going to dump a truckload of John Podesta’s emails right in the middle of last year’s presidential campaign. He is under investigation for collusion with the Russians.
Why defend and give Stone the benefit of the doubt in the Franken case, especially since Stone himself tweeted in that context that he and unnamed others are going after a “long line of Democrats?”
This is not just about Stone. We’ve seen time and again how Donald Trump and his allies in the media, particularly Fox News, use whatever dirt comes their way, from whatever source, to cover up their own wrongdoing and to smear others. As Donald Trump Jr. said, when told that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, “I love it.”
I started my post saying I wasn’t intending to defend Al Franken. But I do believe, as Christopher said, that there is a false equivalence being perpetuated here by Trump and his friends that what Franken did is equivalent to what Trump himself and Roy Moore have done. No way is it equivalent. The Dems as usual are falling for this and need to wake up.
Tactically, if the concern is that debate on the tax bill is being buried in the distraction about Franken, the the Stone angle is a distraction from a distraction and just buries tax bill debate more.
If we’re in a hole, stop digging.
It looks as though Franken is going to soon drop off the front pages in favor (sic) of Charlie Rose, who is now accused of a pattern of actions quite similar to those of Harvey Weinstein. Of course, the limited amount of talk radio to which I was exposed (an Uber driver had it on) suggests that, because Rose is on PBS, this represents a form of liberal hypocrisy that, naturally, is so much worse than anything anybody else has ever done.