SouthernWorldwide.com – A prominent Republican Senator has leveled accusations against both The New York Times and high-ranking Senate Democrats, alleging a coordinated effort to withhold damaging information about Maine Senate Democratic candidate Graham Platner until it could inflict maximum political harm.
Allegations and negative stories surrounding Platner have been accumulating for close to a year, each report gradually eroding his candidacy.
The controversies began last fall with unearthed footage showing him intoxicated and displaying a tattoo of Nazi iconography. This week, the situation escalated with a significant report detailing allegations that Platner raped his ex-girlfriend, Jenny Racicot. However, a report from The New York Times in June had already begun to sow considerable doubt among Democrats in Washington, D.C., regarding his viability as a candidate.
Senator Tim Scott, the Republican Senator from South Carolina who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), has accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and The New York Times of colluding to suppress the bombshell story about Platner. Scott suggests this delay was intended to provide time to find a replacement candidate.
“We should have seen this information long ago,” Scott stated. “But what they’ve done is they’ve made a decision to keep him in the race as long as possible so that they had more time to make the necessary change to try to hold onto that power and, frankly, gain power in Maine.”
“Whether or not Chuck Schumer wanted this candidate or not, the fact of the matter is the Democratic Party decided that this was the hill they were all willing to die on,” he added.
Scott was specifically referencing The Times’ report. In this report, multiple women with whom Platner had relationships, including Racicot, claimed that he was aware of his Nazi tattoo long before it became public knowledge, a fact he had reportedly denied. These women also alleged that Platner exhibited “unsettling behavior” towards women and displayed intimidating tendencies with instances of violence.
The New York Times has denied Senator Scott’s accusations.
The same report prompted an emergency meeting involving top Democratic leadership, Platner’s key Senate supporters, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the Chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). The purpose of the meeting was to assess whether even more damaging information was on the verge of being released.
Despite these developments, Scott maintained that the story and the alleged collusion were “critical pieces of the puzzle.” This is particularly true in the wake of Platner’s most recent scandal, which has seen his support base among Democratic lawmakers and organizations evaporate almost overnight.
Furthermore, Scott charged that the Democrats’ sudden distancing from Platner revealed their underlying motive: to defeat Senator Susan Collins of Maine and reclaim power in the Senate after months of seemingly accepting a stream of allegations against him.
“Those allegations and realities have been real and true the entire time that Democrats knew it,” Scott asserted. “And what makes it worse is that you say they’re all lining up to get away from him now, but they all lined up to support him earlier.”
“And what that tells me is that their primary objective is power over principle, and politics over policy,” he concluded. “They are more interested in stealing the power so they can control the public.”
