Ex-girlfriend says Maine Democrat Graham Platner knew his tattoo was a Nazi symbol all along

Graham Platner, the Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, told reporters last fall that he had no idea the skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his chest was a Nazi symbol. His ex-girlfriend now says that is flatly untrue, and that Platner used to joke about it.

Lyndsey Fifield, a 40-year-old Republican campaign worker from Virginia who dated Platner from 2013 to 2015, told The New York Times that Platner not only knew what the "Totenkopf" insignia represented but referred to it by name. The Totenkopf, German for "death's head", is widely recognized as the emblem of the Nazi SS death squads responsible for the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust.

The allegation strikes at the center of Platner's credibility. In October, a few months after announcing his Senate campaign, Platner gave a statement to Politico in which he described the tattoo as merely a "terrifying skull and crossbones." He said he "absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest" had he understood its meaning and claimed he was "already planning to get this removed" when he was supposedly confronted with its symbolism for the first time. Fifield's account, as reported by the New York Post, directly contradicts that version of events.

What Fifield says Platner told her

Fifield said she would never have recognized the tattoo on her own. But she didn't have to. She told The New York Times that Platner identified it himself:

"I would never have known what that was. He would joke about it being a Nazi tattoo."

She said Platner called it "my Totenkopf" and explained that he and fellow Marines in his unit had deliberately selected the symbol. Her account of his reasoning was specific:

"They literally, deliberately, selected it because it was relevant to their military unit."

Fifield said Platner told her the Marines in his unit saw themselves as a kind of death squad, "they were like a death unit, they were killers", and that they drew a parallel between their own unit and the Nazi SS unit that carried out the Holocaust. If true, Platner's claim that he mistook the tattoo for a generic pirate-style skull falls apart entirely.

Platner's campaign pushed back. His team told The New York Times that he "strongly disputes" Fifield's account of what he knew and what he told her. Platner himself dismissed the allegations as "politically motivated," pointing to Fifield's Republican background and calling her a "lifelong G.O.P. operative who's dedicated her career to electing Republicans."

Fifield anticipated that line of attack. She told The Times:

"I know it looks like a bitter ex-girlfriend Republican trying to take down a Democrat, it has nothing to do with that. If he was running as a Republican, I would be doing this exact same thing."

A campaign already in crisis

The tattoo controversy is not arriving in a vacuum. It lands on top of a sexting scandal that has already rocked Platner's campaign. The Wall Street Journal exposed Platner for texting multiple women on a hookup app while married. Details of his extramarital messages, reportedly involving half a dozen women, roiled the campaign over the weekend.

In response, Platner rushed to Washington to attempt damage control with Senate Democrats. He told his hoped-for colleagues, as The Wall Street Journal reported, that "it's not a secret I've had a messy, complicated life." He added: "The worst of the rumors we've all heard are not true."

That reassurance has not aged well. The New York Times report that followed featured interviews with Platner's ex-girlfriends, and the picture they painted went well beyond marital infidelity. The pattern of explicit private messages resurfacing to upend a political career is becoming grimly familiar in American politics.

Platner appeared on MSNBC's "All in with Chris Hayes" on Thursday night, his first major interview since the sexting scandal broke, and denied abusing ex-girlfriends and lying about the tattoo's meaning.

Fifield's other allegations

The tattoo dispute is not the only claim Fifield made. She also alleged that Platner fantasized about violence, including killing people and raping intruders. She quoted him as saying repeatedly: "If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them", adding, she said, "not in a gay way."

Fifield also alleged that Platner manhandled her on multiple occasions during their relationship. She described one incident in which he twisted her arm during a heated argument. She described the pain plainly:

"It hurt. It didn't cause an injury, it didn't break my arm."

She also said Platner shoved her into a bedroom on another occasion and told her she could not leave until she was "calm." No police reports, charges, or legal filings related to these allegations have been reported. Platner has disputed the claims.

The accumulation of allegations, a Nazi-linked tattoo, extramarital sexting, and now claims of disturbing private behavior and physical intimidation, presents a mounting credibility problem for a candidate who has already secured endorsements from some of the Democratic Party's biggest names. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both endorsed Platner, as did Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Whether those endorsements hold will say something about the party's tolerance for scandal when a Senate seat is at stake. Schumer has so far dodged direct questions about the controversies while reaffirming his support.

The credibility gap

Set aside the allegations of violent fantasies and physical aggression for a moment. The narrowest question, did Platner know what his tattoo meant?, is the one that matters most for his political viability, because it is the one where his own prior statements are most directly challenged.

Platner told Politico in October that he thought the image was a generic skull and crossbones. Fifield says he called it "my Totenkopf," joked about its Nazi origins, and explained the deliberate reasoning behind it. Both accounts cannot be true.

If Platner knew the tattoo's meaning and lied to Politico, he misled the press and the voters of Maine about a symbol tied to one of history's worst atrocities. If Fifield's account is fabricated, a former girlfriend invented an elaborate and specific false narrative, including the German name of the symbol, for reasons she insists have nothing to do with partisanship. Voters can weigh those possibilities.

Platner's defense strategy so far has been to dismiss each new allegation as a political hit job. But the allegations are coming from multiple directions, Politico, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and from people in his own personal life. At some point, "politically motivated" stops being an explanation and starts being a reflex. The broader pattern of damaging archived posts and admissions resurfacing around Platner's candidacy only deepens the problem.

Political scandals involving private conduct that contradicts a candidate's public image are not unique to either party. Leaked private messages have ended careers on both sides of the aisle. But the Democratic establishment's willingness to stand behind Platner through a cascade of increasingly serious allegations raises a fair question about what standard, if any, the party applies to its own.

What comes next

No criminal charges have been filed. No official investigations have been reported. The facts in public view are Fifield's on-the-record claims, Platner's denials, and a growing stack of press reports that have turned a once-promising Democratic Senate campaign into a rolling crisis.

Maine voters will ultimately decide whether Platner's explanations hold up. But the gap between what he told Politico in October and what his ex-girlfriend told The New York Times is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of fact, and one of them is not telling the truth.

When a candidate's best defense is that everyone who knew him personally is lying, voters don't need a pundit to tell them what that means.