An Army veteran says Al Franken grabbed her breast during a photo op in Kuwait

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Al Franken

• Stephanie Kemplin, an Army veteran, said that Sen. Al Franken cupped her breast during a photo op in Kuwait in December 2003.
• Kemplin is the fifth woman to accuse Franken of sexual misconduct in recent weeks.

An Army veteran said that Sen. Al Franken groped her breast during a photo op while she was deployed in Kuwait in December 2003, CNN reported on Thursday morning.

Franken, a Minnesota Democrat who was then a well-known comedian and writer, was performing for military service members abroad when he met Stephanie Kemplin, who was then 27 years old.

"When he put his arm around me, he groped my right breast. He kept his hand all the way over on my breast," Kemplin told CNN. "I've never had a man put their arm around me and then cup my breast. So he was holding my breast on the side."

Kemplin is the fifth woman to accuse Franken of sexual misconduct in recent weeks and the second to allege that he behaved inappropriately while on a United Service Organizations tour. Three other women say Franken groped their buttocks while posing for photos with them.

Kemplin said she was shocked and embarrassed by the incident and did not confront Franken, but she did tell her sister and an ex-boyfriend at the time, both of whom confirmed the allegations to CNN.

"I just remember her telling me that he grabbed her breast and that she was so shocked about it," Amy Muddiman, Kemplin's older sister, told CNN. "My sister is pretty bold and assertive and she said that she didn't know what to do."

Kemplin said she's "confident" the alleged inappropriate touching was not an accident.

"I remember clenching up and how you just feel yourself flushed," she told CNN. "And I remember thinking - is he going to move his hand? Was it an accident? Was he going to move his hand? He never moved his hand."

Franken continues to insist that he doesn't remember these encounters

In response to the new accusation, a spokesperson for Franken suggested that the senator did not remember the incident and repeated his claim that he "never intentionally engaged" in inappropriate behavior.

"As Sen. Franken made clear this week, he takes thousands of photos and has met tens of thousands of people and he has never intentionally engaged in this kind of conduct," the spokesperson told CNN. "He remains fully committed to cooperating with the ethics investigation."

The allegations against Franken have emerged in the two weeks since Leeann Tweeden, a Los Angeles TV and radio host, accused Franken of forcibly kissing and groping her during a USO tour in 2006.

Franken has refused to resign his Senate seat but has repeatedly apologized to the women who have felt disrespected by his behavior and promised to "cooperate completely" with any investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee into his past behavior.

"I know that I am going to have to be much more conscious in these circumstances - much more careful, much more sensitive," Franken said during a press conference on Monday. "It's going to take a long time for me to regain people's trust, but I hope that starting work today that I can start to do that."