OAN Staff Addie Davis
10:30 AM – Monday, June 1, 2026
Democrat candidate for United States Senator from Maine Graham Platner accused media outlets that had reported on his alleged “sexting” scandal as “journalistic malpractice.”
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, he specifically called out the The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and The New York Times (NYT), which had reported on the scandal on Saturday.
“The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times ran stories without any evidence besides the gossip from a former staffer…I’m sorry, that’s frankly journalistic malpractice,” Platner stated.
According to reporting by both outlets, Platner’s wife had told the campaign about messages she had discovered of her husband “sexting” with multiple women, despite the couple having been married since 2023.
Current and former officials working on Platner’s campaign had confirmed the exchanges, according to the NYT. One current official reportedly said the conduct had stopped before the launch of his Senate campaign.
A former campaign senior aide, Genevieve McDonald, claimed that Gertner had reached out in 2025 about her husband’s alleged behavior, the NYT reported.
Per media reports, Gertner talking about feeling betrayed by an unnamed campaign staffer in a statement provided by the Platner campaign.
“I trusted this person with the most private chapter of our lives — the early days of our marriage before any campaign was on our mind — and I am deeply hurt by her betrayal and the invasion of our privacy,” Gertner said.
In a Saturday video statement posted to Platner’s social media campaign account, Gertner said she found the willingness to spread gossip “shameful.”
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“It makes me really angry, disappointed. And I find it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on,” she said.
In a Sunday statement provided to CBS News, Platner alluded to past difficulties in his and Gertner’s relationship.
“Amy and I went through something hard — because of me. We did the work, and I’m grateful for her every hour of every day,” Platner said.
“This campaign is about the ideas that will move Maine forward and past a broken politics of the past. Our opponents want politics to be empty of content and empty of actual change — and beating that is exactly what our movement is about,” he said.
According to CBS News, a campaign official confirmed that the messages exist and that Platner was not denying this following the candidate’s remarks to reporters on Sunday.
“Graham isn’t saying the texts to other women at the start of the marriage are not real. They are,” the campaign official reportedly told the outlet. “He’s just frustrated by the sensationalization of several private facts relayed by a former confidante to journalists.”
When asked by a reporter on Sunday whether or not the texts were true, Platner gave an emphatic answer.
“No, this is the amazing part,” Platner said, going on to criticize the WSJ and the NYT.
When asked again by another reporter if he was confirming that the messages did not exist, Platner focused on the allegations by McDonald.
“I’m confirming that what Genevieve McDonald said in The New York Times is not true,” he said.
“So you never met with her about uncomfortable… sexting messages as the campaign was going,” a reporter asked.
“We talked about things in Amy and I’s marriage that we’ve gone through over the years,” he replied. “We talked about that because that’s our marriage, and we discussed it with the campaign. What Genevieve McDonald claims isn’t true.”
Platner is set to be the Democrat nominee for the Senate race in the state, with the vote to take place on June 9th. If he wins, he will challenge Republican incumbent Susan Collins (R-Maine) in the November general election.
Platner’s campaign has been marred by the resurfacing of past controversial comments, including toward veterans. He also was put under fire for a reported Nazi tattoo.
He claimed to have gotten the tattoo while drunk in Croatia in 2007, alleging he was not aware of its Nazi symbolism, and later covered it with other imagery, according to the New York Post.
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