Arianna Huffington Blasts Fake Al Franken Photo Scandal: 'Trivializes Sexual Harassment'

Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, ridiculed media outlets for turning photos of her and former Saturday Night Live comedian-turned-Minnesota Senator, Al Franken, into alleged sexual harassment evidence.

"The NYPost story about Al Franken groping me in a comedy sketch photo trivializes sexual harassment because he was no more 'groping' me than I was 'strangling' him in the photo I just tweeted," Huffington wrote Tuesday evening.

Less than an hour before, the Huffington Post mogul blasted the right-wing coverage of her and then-comedian Al Franken's photos together: "Just got more photos from the same 'scandalous' photo shoot. Here instead of Al Franken 'groping' me, I'm 'strangling' him. I hope the statue of limitations has expired! #lockmeup," she tweeted.

The report by New York Post's Page Six showed Al Franken holding Huffington as they were posing.

“I think I’m a better judge of how I felt in that satirical photo shoot with Al Franken than the recollections of an anonymous bystander. I thought the point of this moment was to believe women’s accounts of their own experiences,” the Thrive Global CEO wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning.

An anonymous source reportedly told Page Six, “Franken was clowning around, but it really isn’t funny.”

The source continued, “That’s his tactic, pretend like it’s all a big joke. Arianna was pushing his hands away. He was groping her. Franken stood there with his hand on her bottom for a long time, because there are numerous frames, each taken seconds apart, and his hand was there the whole time — his hand wasn’t just there for a quick moment.”

The pictures were taken by a photographer named Harry Benson, who, Page Six reported, declined to comment on the issue.

However, Huffington initially denied these accusations and said the pictures were for a TV sketch they did in 1996. She explained the comedy bit.

“Al and I did a comedic sketch for Bill Maher’s ‘Politically Incorrect’ called ‘Strange Bedfellows,’ in which the whole point, as the name makes clear, was that we were doing political commentary from bed. This shoot was looking back at the sketch, and we were obviously hamming it up for comedic effect...The notion that there was anything inappropriate in this photo shoot is truly absurd," she said.