Top Dem in Tennessee Senate Race Has Record of Covering Up Sexual Assault Allegations

Tennessee Democrat Phil Bredesen, a top party recruit who announced his Senate campaign on Thursday morning, was criticized for hiding details of sexual assault investigations into his top officials during his tenure as the state's governor.

The campaign announcement by Bredesen, who was Tennessee's governor from 2003 through 2011, came just hours before Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.) announced he would be resigning due to allegations of sexual misconduct and amid the ongoing examination of the way workplace harassment claims are handled in Congress.

That sort of examination already took place in Tennessee while Bredesen was governor. It found that Bredesen's administration treated harassment allegations differently when they were directed at top political appointees, with investigators being directed to shred any documentation of the accusations.

The Tennessean, a Nashville-based publication owned by Gannett, first began investigating the ethical processes of Bredesen's office after the May 2005 news that a top official appointed by Bredesen was being suspended for workplace harassment. Reporting on the incident proved difficult as state investigators shredded all the notes taken during the investigation, with the top investigator admitting to being "keenly aware" that documentation could later be requested as public records.

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