![]() At the same time, the Presidential candidacy of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has been plagued by questions about her role as the first of three dozen Democratic senators to demand Franken’s resignation. On June 4th, Pete Buttigieg was widely criticized on social media for saying that he would not have pressured Franken to resign-as had virtually all his Democratic rivals who were then in the Senate-without first learning more about the alleged incidents. His tough questioning of Jeff Sessions, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, had led Sessions to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 election, and prompted the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel.Īs it turns out, Franken’s only role in the 2020 Presidential campaign has been as a figure of controversy. In Senate hearings, Franken had proved himself to be one of the most effective critics of the Trump Administration. Only two years ago, Franken was being talked up as a possible challenger to President Donald Trump in 2020. He had been perhaps the most recognizable figure in the Senate, in part because he’d entered it as a celebrity: a best-selling author and a former writer and performer on “ Saturday Night Live.” Now Franken was just one more face in a gallery of previously powerful men who had been brought down by the #MeToo movement, and whom no one wanted to hear from again. But Franken had experienced one of the most abrupt downfalls in recent political memory. There had been occasional sightings of him: in Washington, people mentioned having glimpsed him riding the Metro or browsing alone in a bookstore there was gossip that he had fallen into a depression, and had been seen in a fetal position on a friend’s couch. But the place felt like the kind of man cave where someone hides out from the world, which is more or less what Franken has been doing since he resigned, in December, 2017, amid accusations of sexual impropriety. ![]() His wife, Franni Bryson, was stuck in their apartment in Washington, D.C., with a cold, and he had evidently done the best he could to be hospitable. Takeout containers of hummus and carrot sticks were set out on the kitchen table. It was a sunny day, but the shades were mostly drawn. Last month, in Minneapolis, I climbed the stairs of a row house to find Al Franken, Minnesota’s disgraced former senator, wandering around in jeans and stocking feet. ![]()
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