Interesting Possible Outcome for the Roy Moore Situation

Senator Al Franken Kissed and Groped Me Without My Consent, And There’s Nothing Funny About It
By Leeann Tweeden

In December of 2006, I embarked on my ninth USO Tour to entertain our troops, my eighth to the Middle East since the 9/11 attacks. My father served in Vietnam and my then-boyfriend (and now husband, Chris) is a pilot in the Air Force, so bringing a ‘little piece of home’ to servicemembers stationed far away from their families was both my passion and my privilege.

Also on the trip were country music artists Darryl Worley, Mark Wills, Keni Thomas, and some cheerleaders from the Dallas Cowboys. The headliner was comedian and now-senator, Al Franken.

Franken had written some skits for the show and brought props and costumes to go along with them. Like many USO shows before and since, the skits were full of sexual innuendo geared toward a young, male audience.

As a TV host and sports broadcaster, as well as a model familiar to the audience from the covers of FHM, Maxim and Playboy, 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.

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.

On the day of the show Franken and I were alone backstage going over our lines one last time. He said to me, “We need to rehearse the kiss.” I laughed and ignored him. Then he said it again. I said something like, ‘Relax Al, this isn’t SNL…we don’t need to rehearse the kiss.’

He continued to insist, and I was beginning to get uncomfortable.

He repeated that actors really need to rehearse everything and that we must practice the kiss. I said ‘OK’ so he would stop badgering me. We did the line leading up to the kiss and then 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.

I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time.

I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth.

I felt disgusted and violated.

Not long after, I performed the skit as written, carefully turning my head so he couldn’t kiss me on the lips.

No one saw what happened backstage. I didn’t tell the Sergeant Major of the Army, who was the sponsor of the tour. I didn’t tell our USO rep what happened.

At the time 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. I told a few of the others on the tour what Franken had done and they knew how I felt about it.

I tried to let it go, but I was angry.

Other than our dialogue on stage, I never had a voluntary conversation with Al Franken again. I avoided him as much as possible and made sure I was never alone with him again for the rest of the tour.

Franken repaid me with petty insults, including drawing devil horns on at least one of the headshots I was autographing for the troops.

But he didn’t stop there.

The tour wrapped and on Christmas Eve we began the 36-hour trip home to L.A. After 2 weeks of grueling travel and performing I was exhausted. When our C-17 cargo plane took off from Afghanistan I immediately fell asleep, even though I was still wearing my flak vest and Kevlar helmet.

It wasn’t until I was back in the US and looking through the CD of photos we were given by the photographer that I saw this one:


I couldn’t believe it. He groped me, without my consent, while I was asleep.

I felt violated all over again. Embarrassed. Belittled. Humiliated.

How dare anyone grab my breasts like this and think it’s funny?

I told my husband everything that happened and showed him the picture.

I wanted to shout my story to the world with a megaphone to anyone who would listen, but even as angry as I was, I was worried about the potential backlash and damage going public might have on my career as a broadcaster.

But that was then, this is now. I’m no longer afraid.

Today, I am the news anchor on McIntyre in the Morning on KABC Radio in Los Angeles. My colleagues are some of the most supportive people I’ve ever worked with in my career. Like everyone in the media, we’ve been reporting on the Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct allegations since they broke, and the flood of similar stories that have come out about others.

A few weeks ago, we had California Congresswoman Jackie Speier on the show and she told us her story of being sexually assaulted when she was a young Congressional aide. She described how a powerful man in the office where she worked ‘held her face, kissed her and stuck his tongue in her mouth.’

At that moment, I thought to myself, Al Franken did that exact same thing to me.

I had locked up those memories of helplessness and violation for a long time, but they all came rushing back to me and my hands clinched into fists like it was yesterday.

I’m still angry at what Al Franken did to me.

Every time I hear his voice or see his face, I am angry. I am angry that I did his stupid skit for the rest of that tour. I am angry that I didn’t call him out in front of everyone when I had the microphone in my hand every night after that. I wanted to. But I didn’t want to rock the boat. I was there to entertain the troops and make sure they forgot about where they were for a few hours. Someday, I thought to myself, I would tell my story.

That day is now.

Senator Franken, you wrote the script. But there’s nothing funny about sexual assault.

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.

While debating whether or not to go public, I even thought to myself, so much worse has happened to so many others, maybe my story isn’t worth telling? But my story is worth telling.

Not just because 2017 is not 2006, or because I am much more secure in my career now than I was then, and not because I’m still angry.

I’m telling my story because there may be others.

I want to have the same effect on them that Congresswoman Jackie Speier had on me. I want them, and all the other victims of sexual assault, to be able to speak out immediately, and not keep their stories –and their anger– locked up inside for years, or decades.

I want the days of silence to be over forever.

Thursday on MSNBC’s “MTP Daily,” celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing Roy Moore accuser Beverly Young Nelson, said she had not asked her client if she saw Moore sign her yearbook.

Questions had been raised by the Moore campaign a day earlier at a press conference in Birmingham, AL about the authenticity of the signature, which Allred had held up as evidence to bolster Young’s claim against Moore.

Partial transcript as follows:

Court Documents: Roy Moore Accuser Has ‘Violent Nature,’ History of Criminal Fraud Against Own Family

by AARON KLEIN26 Nov 2017

Birmingham, ALABAMA — Court documents related to Tina Johnson, an Alabama woman who claims that Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore groped her in his office decades ago, may raise questions about Johnson’s motives in making the accusation.

The documents, reviewed by Breitbart News, show that Moore represented Johnson’s mother in a nasty custody case for Johnson’s then 12-year-old son, Daniel Sitz. In the case, Johnson was repeatedly painted by Moore’s client as an unfit, absent, and unstable mother and was accused of taking her son from his elementary school against his will. Johnson’s mother was ultimately awarded custody in the case.

One affidavit signed by Johnson’s mother while she was represented by Moore accused Johnson of having a “violent nature” and noted that she “has been treated by a psychiatrist when she was approximately 15 years of age.” Johnson was a teenage mother.

Separate criminal documents show that, as late as 2010, Johnson was arrested and pled guilty to felony fraud charges related to checks belonging to a family member. She also entered a court drug program.

Speaking to AL.com, Johnson first went public with the claim that Moore groped her when she was “on legal business with her mother” in 1991. The website noted that “Johnson reached out to AL.com” to discuss her alleged experience with Moore.

The website related that Johnson was “at the office to sign over custody of her 12-year-old son to her mother, with whom he’d been living.”

Johnson claimed that, after the two met with Moore, her mother walked out of the office door first and that, as Johnson was walking out, Moore grabbed her buttocks from behind. “He didn’t pinch it; he grabbed it,” she claims.

Johnson claims that she was so surprised by Moore’s alleged actions that she didn’t mention anything to her mother — even though Johnson described her mother as sitting next to her in Moore’s office just before the alleged incident.

Johnson’s mother, Mary Katherine Cofield, had hired Moore, then a private attorney, to represent her in the custody case for Johnson’s son, Daniel Sitz. The custody documents, filed by Moore, refer to Johnson by her married name at the time, Tina Sitz.

AL.com reported that it “located the court documents from 1991, detailing the custody transfer.”

The website did not report on the nastiness of the soap opera-like custody case or that Moore’s client filed numerous court documents with allegations against Johnson. In one affidavit, Cofield stated that Johnson “has a violent nature and has been treated by a psychiatrist when she was approximately 15 years of age.”

Another document, signed by Moore, stated that Cofield — and not Johnson — was the “most fit and proper person” to have custody of Daniel Sitz.

Johnson’s son had resided with his grandmother, Cofield, since he was nine months old. Cofield says that, during those years, she provided Daniel with food, clothing, and shelter “without any assistance” from Johnson. A judge officially granted Cofield full custody on September 23, 1991.

In the custody documents, Johnson is accused of taking her son against his will. A September 11, 1991, affidavit signed by Daniel says that two days earlier, Johnson took him from elementary school “against my will and made me go to her home.”

An affidavit signed by Johnson’s mother claimed that Johnson took Daniel from school “forcefully and without my permission.”

Immediately after the school incident, documented by Moore’s office, Cofield was granted temporary custody of Daniel until the September 23 hearing at which she received permanent custody.

Daniel stated that he wants to “live with my grandmother with whom I have lived as long as I can remember.”

The AL.com article, meanwhile, mentioned in one sentence in the 18th paragraph of its story that Johnson “has pled guilty to writing bad checks, and for third-degree theft of property, which she said stemmed from family disagreement over the care of her late stepfather.”

Criminal and court records reviewed by Breitbart News find that she was arrested on February 25, 2010, for the felony charge of criminal possession of a forged instrument and theft by deception. She spent one day in jail and was released on bond.

The case revolved around the charges of intent to “defraud, possess or utter” checks in the amounts of $288, $129.96, $259.92, $300, and $170 respectively. She was also charged with obtaining or exerting unauthorized control over five checks for $25 each with intent to “deprive the owner of said property.”

Those five checks were in the name of “W.G. Cofield,” ostensibly her late stepfather. Cofield personally appeared to file charges against Johnson, criminal records show.

Johnson claims that Moore groped her in 1991 at his private law practice on Third Street in Gadsden, Alabama.

Last week, Breitbart News interviewed Delbra Adams, Moore’s former longtime secretary and judicial assistant. Adams said that, in her 13 years of working for Moore, she never saw or experienced any inappropriate conduct toward women.

Adams worked for Moore in 1991 at the time of Johnson’s accusations. Adams’s desk was right outside his office door at the time. Adams’ name was signed as a notary on one of the custody documents filed in Johnson’s case on behalf of Johnson’s mother, Cofield.

Numerous attempts to reach Johnson for comment were unsuccessful.

Moore has strenuously denied the numerous accusations against him.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. Follow him on Twitter @aaronkleinshow. Follow him on Facebook.

Written with additional research by Joshua Klein.