The hosts of The View all preached about the importance of due process Tuesday during a conversation surrounding the recent report about disgraced former senator, Al Franken.
The New Yorker published a story the day before by Jane Mayer breaking down multiple false claims Franken’s first accuser made in her story. The piece failed to address the seven other women who made similar claims against the former Minnesota senator.
“The thing is there is a dispute about what happened,” Sunny Hustin stated. “There are some holes in the story. I think the problem is that he wasn’t afforded any due process. He resigned three weeks after the accusations came forward, and he was calling for an ethics investigation. I always do tend to — because I was a sex crimes prosecutor — err on the side of believing women, and I think for far too long we haven’t believed women.”
Mayer spoke to multiple Democratic senators who urged the former Minnesota senator to resign, and seven of them said they regret their decision. Sen. Patrick Leahy, for example, called it “one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made” in his 45-year Senate tenure.
[Read: Al Franken ‘absolutely’ regrets resigning, his Senate colleagues regret demanding it]
Joy Behar argued that they should have “a day in court.”
“I also would have been fine with due process,” Megan McCain added. “I don’t have a problem with that.”
Whoopi Goldberg proceeded to go on a short monologue about the importance of due process.
“Due process to me is a must because this is what happens. People — we talk about witch hunts or he talks about it. That’s a witch hunt because the #MeToo movement came up, and everything everybody said, there was no space to say, ‘Well wait a minute, let’s talk about this,'” she stated. “The Central Park Five is big to me. That’s a big thing. Tawana Brawley is a big thing because people took themselves out. And yeah, it’s a small percentage, but you don’t want your son to be the one that’s being accused without getting due process.”
