WASHINGTON — The first woman to publicly accuse Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner of abuse and other violent behavior excoriated the New York Times Tuesday for its reporting of her claims, alleging the Gray Lady played up her story and political views to boost the Platner campaign.
Lyndsey Fifield, who told the outlet that Platner twisted her arm behind her back and locked her in a room against her will, among other physical acts of aggression, charged in a lengthy X post that Times reporters Katie Glueck and Lisa Lerer declined to speak to people best-placed to corroborate her claims.
“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 declared 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 further explained.
“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.”
Friends of Fifield, a conservative who has worked on GOP campaigns in the past, said she initially went to the Times despite her reservations because she felt her story would come across as more credible.
Fifield added that she also gave Glueck and Lerer “the names of all my former roommates who remembered him stalking our row house (which was about 5 houses down from his) and waiting for me to return. I gave them screenshots of messages between these roommates and I discussing it.
“I gave them the names of other men I dated who might have remembered him following us around [Capitol Hill] and showing up on my stoop after we walked home from dates to confront us. I gave them emails to my landlord urgently ending my lease and moving to an apartment across town and diary entries talking about it – all time marked.”
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.’”
