A lot of people believe Gillibrand acted on her own against Franken. That's demonstrably false. She was one of a group of a half dozen women senators who coordinated their responses.
Nobody's written a deep-dive history of how the Franken thing went down yet, but coverage at the time made it clear that Gillibrand was the spokesperson for a substantial fraction of the caucus, not a lone wolf.
But it's not really in anyone's interest to point out that Gillibrand was part of a team right now, so you wind up with coverage like this, which misrepresents the history in a major way. politico.com/story/2018/11/…
I understand the perspective of people who think Franken should have stuck around to defend himself, but it's important to acknowledge how little support he had among his fellow senate Dems by the time he quit. Gillibrand wasn't out on a limb.
And of course Franken never articulated a defense that would allow his colleagues to support him with confidence. In the absence of that, mounting pressure for his resignation was inevitable.
Franken's sexual misconduct on the USO tour wasn't just caught on camera, it was performed for a photographer. Even if some of the other allegations against him were less conclusive, that fact colored them all.
