Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner denied claims about his past from a recent New York Times article alleging “intimidating and disturbing” behavior toward women, during an interview Thursday night with MS NOW’s Chris Hayes. The Times interviewed six former girlfriends and more than a dozen other people who know Platner. There are some allegations in this piece that I just want to be kind of unequivocal about, that are simply not true. Anything alleging physicality, anything alleging that I knew what my tattoo was, these are the statements of someone who’s politically motivated, Platner said to Hayes. In this piece, there’s a lot about my struggling, not being a good boyfriend, certainly self-medicating with alcohol, and I’ve been very upfront since the beginning of this campaign that that was a pretty dark period of my life after I came back from my combat service, he said. He also denied that he had a “Nazi tattoo” or knew that it could be interpreted that way. The alleged “Totenkopf” tattoo has become the number one reference for him among Beltway types. I had that tattoo for 17 years. It’s a skull and crossbones. I got it with other Marines who I served with in Iraq, Platner said. “In the time that I had it, I got a security clearance, I reenlisted in the Army where I was scanned for hate tattoos, and I took my shirt off in front of my family — many of whom are Jewish.” Any statement saying that I did know is again totally false. If people would like to continue to drag things up from that time in my life, I’m sure that we are going to see at some point somebody attempt to do exactly that. Just know that these are things that happened before I became a public figure, Platner said.
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