Valerie Jarrett Blasts Al Franken over Sexual Assault Allegations

Valerie Jarrett, Al Franken
AFP/Getty-AP Images
Adam Shaw

Former Obama White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett added her name Thursday to the list of Democrats criticising under-fire Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) to step down after he was accused of committing sexual assault in 2006.

“Just imagine your mom, spouse, sister or daughter in this photo. Not so funny now, is it?” Jarrett tweeted alongside an image capturing Franken’s groping of journalist Leeann Tweeden on a two-week USO tour.

Tweeden accused Franken of forcibly kissing her against her will during a rehearsal.

“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,” she said, adding that she ran off to the bathroom immediately after to “rinse the taste of him out of my mouth.”

She released the image of a separate groping assault, which she says occurred after she had rejected his advances during the rehearsal and was when she was asleep.

“I couldn’t believe it. He groped me, without my consent, while I was asleep,” Tweeden wrote, adding, “How dare anyone grab my breasts like this and think it’s funny?”

On Thursday Franken apologized and said that while he remembers the rehearsal differently, he admits the photograph was “completely inappropriate.”

“I don’t know what was in my head when I took that picture, and it doesn’t matter,” he wrote on Facebook. “There’s no excuse. I look at it now and I feel disgusted with myself. It isn’t funny.”

Democrats and Republicans condemned Franken’s actions, and Franken himself joined calls for an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee.

Jarrett also praised Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) for “speaking out” about Franken’s actions. Gillibrand called Franken’s actions “deeply disturbing” and “unacceptable.”

“Thank you for speaking out, @SenGillibrand.   This is no joking matter under any circumstances,” Jarrett tweeted.

Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.

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