Here’s what to know about the scandals that have come Platner’s way ahead of Maine’s June 9 primary and his response to each:

1. Extramarital Sexually-Explicit Text Messages

Over the weekend, news broke that Platner had sent sexually explicit text messages to multiple women while he was married to his wife, Amy Gertner. Gertner had warned Platner’s then-political director last summer that her husband had sent the messages to make sure the campaign was aware of them. When the news came out this week, Gertner defended Platner and their marriage.

“We did the hard work that marriage requires. We went to counseling. We were honest with each other in ways that weren’t easy,” Gernter said in a statement given to the Wall Street Journal. “And we came through it, not in spite of how much we’ve been through, but because of how much we love each other and the life we’ve built. Our marriage today is stronger than ever before.”

Platner dismissed the reports about the messages on Sunday as the media talking about “gossip” instead of policy.

“I have a very loving and very happy marriage. They would very much like to try to rip that apart. They’re going to come after us in every awful way that they possibly can, and we’re just going to keep talking about the fact that the hospitals are closing, the fact that child care facilities are closing, the fact that teachers and nurses aren’t paid enough and the fact that everybody down here continues to work harder and longer and get less,” Platner said at a campaign event this week.

As Platner and Gertner defend their marriage, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said he has “concerns” about the situation in an ABC News interview on Sunday. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said that Platner “made mistakes” but defended his character and touted his military service.

“Yeah, I have concerns,” Booker said. “That guy has questions to answer, and that’s what campaigns are for.”

Democratic leadership largely stood by Platner after the scandal earlier this week, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and others meeting with the candidate, though Schumer was mum on the meeting’s details.

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2. Nazi Tattoo

In October 2025, Platner began to face questions about the story behind a tattoo on his chest that closely resembled the Nazi’s infamous Death’s Head symbol when images broke of the candidate’s controversial ink. Adolf Hitler’s SS-Totenkopfverbände, the unit responsible for the Nazi’s concentration camps, used the Death’s Head symbol during the Holocaust.

Platner has maintained that he did not know the meaning behind the symbol, telling the public that he received the tattoo in his 20s while drinking with his fellow Marines. Platner has said he and his friends chose the tattoo because it was “a terrifying looking skull and crossbones” and said that he is “not a secret Nazi.”

“Did anybody ever once say — ‘Hey, you’re a Nazi.’ It never came up until we got wind that in the opposition research, somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo,” Platner said in an October Pod Save America interview.

While progressive lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stuck by Platner in the face of the controversy, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) bucked his party’s own nominee, refusing to endorse Platner over the tattoo.

“I find that tattoo and his commentary about it to be personally disqualifying,” Auchincloss said in a CNN interview. “I hope Maine voters agree with me.”

In a New York Times article released earlier this week, his ex-girlfriend Lyndsey Fifield claimed Platner referred to the tattoo as “my Totenkopf” while they were dating. Platner’s campaign denied that he knew the meaning of the tattoo in a statement to the outlet. He subsequently accused Fifield of leaking the earlier information about the tattoo in an interview with MS Now. Fifield confirmed that was the case, adding in a social media post that she was “terrified he would find out it was me.”

3. Platner’s ex-girlfriends accuse him of “unsettling” behavior

Three women who previously dated Graham Platner accused the Senate candidate of “unsettling” emotional abuse and volatile, toxic behavior in a bombshell New York Times report that broke on Thursday.

One of the women, Fifield, said that though Platner never hit her, he could be physically rough and did regularly grab her shoulders, once forcefully grabbing her by the wrist after an argument.

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Platner denied the allegations made in the report in an interview on MS NOW Thursday evening and during his Friday night rally in Bar Harbor, calling them “politically motivated, serious, and false.”

“There are some allegations in this piece that I just want to be kind of unequivocal about are simply not true,” Platner told the outlet. “Anything alleging physicality, anything alleging that I knew what my tattoo was, these are the statements of someone who’s politically motivated.”

But on the opposite end of the spectrum, Fifield panned the New York Times report as a “gift” to Platner’s campaign, accusing the outlet of “violating the trust of his victims.”

“This really was a setup all along,” Fifield wrote in an X post. “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.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) appeared with Platner at the rally on Friday, but also blasted his “toxic and volatile” past, referring to the New York Times report.

“No one should make excuses for his past relationships, some of which were toxic and volatile, and no one on our side should attack the women who came forward,” Khanna said.

“Democrats believe in respecting the equality and the dignity of women, and we always will,” Khanna continued. “And we reject, unequivocally, misogyny. We reject it. And you know, who else rejects it? Graham Platner. He understood that those years that he came back were not the best years of his life. He was ashamed of some of the things he said and did, and then he, unlike others, took accountability for it.”

4. Online and social media posts

The first scandal of the campaign to hit Platner was when old online posts he made on platforms like Reddit surfaced and were connected to his accounts. 

Platner had made multiple pro-communism comments and several comments against white people and law enforcement on social media. In the since-deleted comments, Platner had called police officers “bastards” in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and said things like “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history.”

In October, Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin stood by Platner, but said his comments were “indefensible, they’re hurtful, and they’re offensive.”

Platner has pointed to his struggles with PTSD, saying he has grown from previous opinions he held.

“I’m not going to minimize what has come out,” Platner said during a campaign event in October.  “I am not today, who I always have been. I used to hold different opinions. I used to use different language. I said things and believed things that today I find abhorrent … the more I realized that many of those stories and beliefs that I had were wrong, and I changed them, and it was through that journey that I became who I am today.”

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Platner also alluded to the comments on Friday, telling the Bar Harbor crowd that Maine has had his back since the social media posts were first aired.

“When hurtful things I said on the internet a decade ago came out into the public, as I shared my personal journey through PTSD and darkness of recovery and accountability and growth, Maine had my back,” Platner said.