Washington, May 6 (IANS): A senator, caught looking at pornographic images while sitting on the US Senate floor, says he was looking at an email as he was "just sitting there, bored".

Senator Mike Bennett was captured Thursday morning taking a look at pornographic material on his computer on the Senate floor. The incident took place as a controversial abortion bill was being debated.

Bennett told Sunshine State News that the email was sent to him by a woman "who happens to be a former court administrator".

"I was just sitting there, bored as they were debating the abortion bill.

"I opened it up and said holy (expletive)! What's on my screen? and clicked away from it right away," Bennett was quoted as saying.

The image was of four bikini-clad women with their tops exposed. Sunshine State News could not verify for how long the image had been open before their cameras started rolling on it. It was, however, up for at least three seconds before it disappeared from the screen.

On being asked whether he ever looks at pornography while on the Senate floor, Bennett said: "You'd have to be insane to do that. It all goes through a server. I don't think anybody would be doing that."

Senate spokesperson Jaryn Emhof said: "There was some confusion about an email he (Bennett) received. He thought it was an email about an item being debated on the Senate floor. As soon as he realised it wasn't he closed the page."

The senator was also spotted watching a video of a dog running out of the water and shaking itself off.

The incident comes barely weeks after a probe found that a number of Securities and Exchange Commission employees were spending several hours visiting pornographic websites on government-issued computers.