WASHINGTON — Lyndsey Fifield, the first woman to publicly accuse Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner of abuse and violent conduct, sharply criticized The New York Times on Tuesday, claiming the paper’s handling of her allegations ultimately helped soften the political fallout for Platner.
Fifield, who told the Times that Platner twisted her arm behind her back, locked her in a room against her will and engaged in other acts of physical aggression, said in a lengthy post on X that reporters Katie Glueck and Lisa Lerer failed to contact key people who, in her view, were in the best position to support her account.
“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,” Fifield wrote on X.
“It was by design. 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,” she continued.
According to Fifield, the reporters contacted only two people she had identified as able to confirm the timeline of her relationship with Platner and related events, but not the alleged abuse itself. “They simply did not call the other three,” she said.
Friends of Fifield, a conservative who has previously worked on Republican campaigns, said she chose to speak with the Times despite misgivings because she believed the outlet’s stature would make her allegations more likely to be taken seriously.
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Fifield also said she provided Glueck and Lerer with “the names of all my former roommates who remembered him stalking our row house,” which she said was located about five houses from Platner’s, and waiting for her to come home. She added that she shared screenshots of messages between herself and those roommates discussing the alleged incidents.
She further claimed she gave the reporters the names of men she had dated who might recall Platner allegedly following them around Capitol Hill or appearing on her stoop after dates to confront them. Fifield said she also supplied time-stamped materials, including emails to her landlord urgently ending her lease, records of her move to another apartment across town and diary entries describing the situation.
On Monday, Maine resident Jenny Racicot — who, unlike Fifield, shares many of the candidates left-wing political views — came forward with graphic rape accusations against Platner.
Racicot claimed that she told the Times her story off the record, but opted to come forward because she was dismayed by the portrayal of Fifield.
Fifield claimed Tuesday that she was told by the reporters that “my part in their reporting would be small. 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,” she concluded.
“But tell me again how they ‘could not corroborate.’”
