Woman Says Al Franken Groped Her at the Minnesota State Fair

Another woman has accused Minnesota Sen. Al Franken of inappropriately touching her — this time after he was elected a U.S. senator.

Last Thursday, KABC radio anchor Leeann Tweeden rocked the nation when she accused Franken, a liberal Democrat, of forcibly kissing her in 2006. She provided a photo of Franken groping her while she was asleep on a military aircraft. After Tweeden came forward, Melanie Morgan accused Franken of verbally harassing her for three days in 2000 after the two appeared on ABC’s “Politically Incorrect” with Bill Maher and disagreed during a budget debate.

[lz_ndn video=33277521]

But both those incidents occurred before Franken was elected to public office. CNN reported Monday that Lindsay Menz, 33, reached out to the network last week to share her story about an alleged offense that occurred in 2010, almost two years after Franken was first elected to the U.S. Senate.

While Menz was at the Minnesota State Fair with her husband in the summer of 2010, she told CNN she posed with Franken while her husband snapped a photo. 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,” she said.

“It was wrapped tightly around my butt cheek,” Menz said. “It wasn’t around my waist. It wasn’t around my hip or side. It was definitely on my butt.”

Noting that the touch lasted a few seconds, Menz said, “I was like, oh my God, what’s happening.”

Related: Al Franken Accused of Forcibly Kissing, Groping Woman

Menz’s mother, Jodi Brown, told CNN she remembered discussing the incident immediately afterward with her daughter and her son-in-law, telling the outlet that Menz’s husband told her, “Our senator just groped my wife right in front of me.”

Franken told CNN he did not recall taking the specific photo with Menz.

“I take thousands of photos at the state fair surrounded by hundreds of people, and I certainly don’t remember taking this picture,” Franken said in a statement to the outlet. “I feel badly that Ms. Menz came away from our interaction feeling disrespected.”

Menz said she “felt gross” after the unpleasant interaction with Franken, saying, “It’d be like being walking through the mall and some random person grabbing your butt.”

“You just feel gross. Like ew, I want to wash that off … me,” Menz said. “I was upset.”

Menz said she believes Tweeden’s story of her interactions with Franken was far worse than her own, saying, “I don’t want to paint my story in the same light as hers.”

“The reason I want to say something is if someone sees that I said something, maybe it would give them the courage to say something, too,” Menz added.

(photo credit, homepage image: Timothy Simons, Louis CK, Al Franken and Pamela Adlon, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Peabody Awards; photo credit, article image: Al Franken, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Peabody Awards)