Platner Accuser Details How NY Times Manipulated Story to Lessen Impact: 'It Was By Design'
The New York Times intentionally watered down its June report on Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner of Maine’s mistreatment of past girlfriends, one of the women quoted in the report is alleging.
“I actually understand why Democrat leaders didn’t take our stories seriously when the Times reported them in June but are taking them seriously now. It was by design,” Lyndsey Fifield wrote in a post published Tuesday morning on the social media platform X.
Fifield, 40, who dated Platner from 2013 to 2015, summed up Platner by saying he was “cavalierly contemptuous of women’s emotions, of our ‘weakness,’” according to the initial report in The New York Times
“During one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was ‘calm,’” the Times reported, noting that Fifield left the next morning after falling asleep in the room.
I actually understand why Democrat leaders didn’t take our stories seriously when the Times reported them in June but are taking them seriously now.
It was by design.
The line most shared from the piece was the claim that the Times “could not corroborate” my story despite…
— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) July 7, 2026
In that report, Jenny Racicot, 41, a Maine Democrat, said that in 2021, after she said she did not want him around, Platner came to her house drunk. The Times report said she “declined to elaborate,” but reported that “she cut off contact soon after that episode and found his behavior ‘reckless’ and ‘unsettling.’”
In a Politico report published Monday, Racicot elaborated. She said Platner not only came to her home, but claimed he raped her in her bedroom.
The latest allegation has rocked rocked Platner’s campaign.
The 41-year-old one-time rising Democratic star now says he is “taking time to reflect on the best path forward” for his political campaign. July 13 is the deadline for him to withdraw if the Democratic Party is going to be able to put another candidate in the Senate race, according to The Hill.
In her post on X, Fifield wrote that the New York Times had all the information it needed to tell the whole story in June.
More here on the NY Times negligence in reporting allegations of assault committed by Graham Platner. https://t.co/39v6zH9L7L
— Brit Hume (@brithume) July 7, 2026
“The line most shared from the piece was the claim that the Times ‘could not corroborate’ my story despite talking to two of my friends. I gave them the contact information for five friends. They called the two who I clarified would not know about the abuse but would be able to affirm our relationship timeline, events, etc. They simply did not call the other three,” she wrote.
She wrote that she gave the newspaper the name of a former boyfriend, adding, “They said oh NO we don’t need to bother HIM (or my priest). Besides, I had written about it in my diary in detail, they reassured. As the weeks dragged on I stopped trying to give them evidence because the amount I had already given them seemed to overwhelm them and I thought it meant they clearly had more than enough to verify my every claim.”
“My friends might not have known the details of the abuse, but they affirmed that yes, I had told them that he was abusive—long before he ran for Senate. Besides, they assured, my part in their reporting would be small,” she wrote.
“I thought my details would only serve to affirm Jenny and the other anonymous woman. Jenny and I – having never met or spoken – both shared with these reporters terrifyingly similar details of intimate partner violence, coercive control, and cycles of abuse/love bombing. The third unnamed woman in the story did as well. But tell me again how they ‘could not corroborate,” she wrote.
Part 2 should never have been needed.
There is no reason Jenny shouldn’t have been able to stay anonymous to share her full story in the Times.
We both gave them sources corroborating our details they didn’t even bother to call.
— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) July 7, 2026
“Part 2 should never have been needed,” Fifield wrote in another post.
“There is no reason Jenny shouldn’t have been able to stay anonymous to share her full story in the Times. We both gave them sources corroborating our details they didn’t even bother to call,” she wrote.
Fifield had earlier slammed the New York Times report in another post on X.
“It dawned on me that this really was a set up all along. 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,” she wrote in June.
I bucked all advice from my friends (and resisted my conservative bias) and decided to fully trust the Times journalists.
As they left my home they asked that I not talk to any other outlets and I insisted then and repeatedly over the following weeks that I would keep my word…
— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) June 5, 2026
“Violating the trust of his victims. Shattering the trust I placed in them with the most vulnerable story of my life,” she wrote.
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