A woman who accused Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner of toxic behavior when he dated her years ago accused the outlet that reported her allegations of manipulating the narrative in his favor.
The New York Times published a story on Thursday containing allegations from Lyndsey Fifield and two other women who dated Platner, expressing concern that he was guilty of “unsettling” emotional abuse, consisting of volatile and toxic behavioral patterns. Three others who dated the Democratic Senate candidate praised him.
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Fifield, who reportedly dated Platner from 2013 to 2015, this week accused New York Times reporters Katie Glueck and Lisa Lerer of twisting her story into a “gift” to her ex’s campaign.
“This really was a setup all along,” she wrote in a lengthy post to X. “The journalists I trusted who convinced me to share a story I never wanted to tell methodically delayed and twisted this into a gift to the Platner campaign. Violating the trust of his victims. Shattering the trust I placed in them with the most vulnerable story of my life.”
Among Fifield’s complaints was an accusation that the journalists failed to include “any mention that I DID confide in multiple friends through the years that Graham had been abusive — long before he was running for office.”
“Those friends confirm they told the Times so,” she wrote.
Fifield and other women told the outlet that his actions were intimidating, disturbing, and sometimes aggressive. She said Platner never hit or punched her but did regularly grab her by the shoulders, and forcefully grabbed her by the wrist after an argument.
She also said Platner had made comments about using rape as a power against someone else.
“He said this a lot: If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them,” the 40-year-old woman said, adding he justified it by saying it would not be in “a sexual way, not in a gay way,” she told the outlet.
Platner is in one of the tightest campaigns in the country, as he seeks to unseat Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in November and flip the Senate seat blue. He has repeatedly elaborated on the campaign trail about struggles with PTSD for years, following his combat tours in the Marine Corps, which he said induced serious mental health struggles and behavior he is “not proud of.” The candidate has also expressed concern that the Democratic establishment, which initially favored Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) to challenge Collins, deliberately leaked a series of unflattering parts of his past to derail his campaign.
One of the biggest sources of criticism for Platner has been his inability to properly explain why he got a tattoo of the Totenkopf, the symbol of the SS guards of concentration camps. Fifield said she was the one who leaked the information about Platner’s tattoo months ago, and further explained her evidence disproving Platner’s claimed he didn’t know what the symbol represented.
Fifield said Platner himself taught her the word for the symbol and called it “my Totenkopf.”
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Following the latest controversial report on Thursday, Platner reiterated his past struggles with mental health, saying he takes responsibility for being “far from a perfect boyfriend” over a decade ago.
“Throughout this campaign, I’ve been open about what was a very dark period of my life where I struggled with undiagnosed PTSD, too often self-medicated with alcohol, and was a far from perfect boyfriend. I take responsibility for all of that, and wish I had been better,” Platner said in a statement. “Any characterization beyond that is false, and I believe, politically motivated. I’m not proud of who I was then, but I am proud of the work I’ve done since, and the movement we are building in Maine.”
