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Sen. Franken Loses His Cool During Hearing on Sessions for AG

February 1, 2017

Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.) lost his cool during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.

Franken attacked Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), who was not present, but fellow Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R.) objected to Franken's comments. At the hearing, the committee was discussing moving forward Sen. Jeff Sessions' (R., Ala.) nomination to be the next attorney general.

"I object to the senator disparaging a fellow member of the committee here in his absence," Cornyn said of Franken's comments.

"Well, he should be here first of all, and secondly, he disparaged me, senator!" Franken yelled over Cornyn.

After committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) paused the confrontation, Cornyn raised his objection. Following Cornyn's remakrs, an aggravated Franken responded by again going after Cruz.

"This is what happened. Those are the facts. But when describing this history, Sen. Cruz misrepresented what happened, so I'd like to take this opportunity to set the record straight," Franken said.

Cornyn again raised his objection to Franken's statement.

Grassley then asked Franken "to leave personalities out of it."

"Can I explain what I'm doing here, because Sen. Cruz did the very thing that Sen. Cornyn is accusing me of doing," Franken said. "In my absence, he misrepresented me, his misrepresented Mr. Heber, he personally went after me, he personally impugned my integrity. You didn't object then, did you?"

"I'm not sure I was here," Cornyn responded.

"It would be a decent and honorable thing to do to do it in the senator's presence and not behind his back," Cornyn continued.

Franken snapped back that Cruz would have a tape of it.