Platner’s Fellow Marine Pushes Back on Accuser’s Claim About Their Tattoos
A Marine who got matching tattoos with Platner tells Zeteo ‘we did not purposely get hateful fucking shit… We just got matching skull-and-crossbone tattoos that we thought looked cool.’
A Marine who served with Graham Platner in Iraq and got matching tattoos with him in Croatia pushed back on a new claim, published in the New York Times on Thursday, that they deliberately chose a Nazi-style symbol.
The accusation appeared in a story relating Lyndsey Fifield’s experiences with Platner when they dated in the 2010s. Fifield, a conservative activist who previously led a PR campaign defending Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh from allegations of sexual assault, accused Platner of being physical with her, among other claims.
Fifield told the paper that Platner knew his skull-and-crossbones tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol and had called it “my Totenkopf.” Platner has consistently denied this charge, which was first reported by Jewish Insider and CNN in the fall. Fifield appears to have been the source for both of those stories.
The Times wrote that Fifield further claimed that Platner “said he told her that he and other members of his unit selected the tattoo because ‘they were like a death unit, they were killers,’ and saw a parallel between their unit and the Nazi Schutzstaffel, or SS, unit, that used the skull-and-crossbones image.” She told the paper: “They literally, deliberately, selected it because it was relevant to their military unit.”
Phil Proschko, who served with Platner in the Marines, dismissed this claim in a brief interview with Zeteo on Friday.
“No, we did not purposely get hateful fucking shit because we’re racist people,” he said. “We got matching tattoos because we were in our 20s, drunk in Croatia, and that’s it. That’s all that fucking happened.”
Proschko, who participated in a Platner veterans town hall several weeks ago, told the story of their tattoos this way: “We went, we got matching tattoos that we pulled off the wall, or it was out of a book, I don’t remember. We thought it looked cool, something to commemorate what happened, all the people we lost in our unit in Ramadi.”
He noted he served with Platner, and did not live with him after, and would not have firsthand knowledge about how the Senate candidate had described the tattoo to people before running for office: “Whatever he said to somebody else after the fact, I have no fucking clue about,” Proschko said.
Platner denied Fifield’s claims Thursday evening in an interview with MS Now. “Anything alleging physicality, anything alleging that I knew what my tattoo was, these are the statements of someone who is politically motivated,” he said.
Elsewhere in the Times story, Fifield alleged that Platner had regularly grabbed her by the shoulders during their relationship, once yanked her out of a cab by her wrist, and once locked her in a bedroom during an argument, among other accusations.
The Times noted the paper “could not independently corroborate Ms. Fifield’s account of the altercations,” and that her friends “could not corroborate the physical altercations or the most controversial comments she described.”
Fifield did not immediately respond to Zeteo’s request for comment.
Zeteo has attempted to contact another woman who dated Platner and described his behavior as “unsettling” in the Times. Her home phone appears to be currently unavailable or disconnected.
Like Platner, Proschko said, “I too have PTSD. It changes your mental process. It’s something that is very difficult to work through, and he is somebody that has gone miles above anybody that’s even tried to better themselves. He’s not a fucking racist, he’s far from it.”
He added, “I don’t want to speak to any more reporters. That was over 20 years ago. We just got matching skull-and-crossbone tattoos that we thought looked cool in Croatia. Whatever happened after that, that’s everybody else’s fucking business.”
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