Politics
Long before he took on Trump, Adam Schiff's pursuit of tough justice defined his career
When Rep. Adam B. Schiff stood before the U.S. Senate on the final day of President Trump’s first impeachment trial, he reprised a familiar role: prosecutor.
The former assistant U.S. attorney hadn’t tried a case in more than a decade, but he was surprised how quickly the muscle memory came back. Wearing a crisp blue suit, the Burbank Democrat launched into a lacerating closing argument, trying to convince senators that Trump lacked the integrity, morality and temperament to remain in the White House.
“He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again,” Schiff said. “You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less. And decency matters not at all.”
The Senate ultimately voted to acquit Trump. But Schiff’s leading role in the historic proceeding has become etched in the nation’s political psyche, lionizing him among fellow Democrats, demonizing him among Republicans and seeding his 2024 campaign for the U.S. Senate.
Schiff, a federal prosecutor, campaigned in the 1990s as a law-and-order Democrat, eventually winning a seat in the state Senate.
(David Bohrer / For The Times)
The roots of Schiff’s tough-on-Trump persona go back to the 1990s, when the former federal prosecutor won a seat in the California Legislature as a law enforcement Democrat. In his earliest days in Sacramento, he pushed to increase some penalties, including for young offenders — an approach to criminal justice that is anathema to many progressives today.
Though the pursuit of justice has always been a driving force for Schiff, his attitude toward how justice should be applied, and to whom, has changed. In Congress, he has worked on gun control, police misconduct and investigations into Russia’s support for Trump’s 2016 campaign and into the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
His time as a federal prosecutor, the 63-year-old Schiff said this week, taught him “the importance of upholding the rule of law.”
“That’s been a core conviction for me,” he told The Times in a phone interview. “And that training came in much more handy than I would have ever imagined during the era of Trump.”
After the 1993 murder of Polly Klaas, a 12-year-old from Petaluma who was kidnapped by a man with a long criminal history, California enacted harsher sentencing requirements. In 1994, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson signed the so-called three-strikes law, which doubled the normal sentence for an offender’s second felony conviction and raised the penalty for a third conviction to 25 years to life. More than 70% of California voters supported the three-strikes law at the ballot box that fall.
Back then, Schiff was working as an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. He handled several high-profile cases, including the third trial of Richard Miller, a former FBI agent who was convicted of passing classified documents to the Soviet Union.
Schiff talks with members of Long Beach Firefighters Assn. Local 372 in Signal Hill last weekend.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
The experience taught Schiff how to conduct a complicated investigation into a white-collar crime. In a not-too-subtle jab at Trump, Schiff said he also learned the ways of Russian tradecraft, including “how they target people who are of poor moral character, who are philanderers, who are obsessed with money.”
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During his race for the state Senate in 1996, Schiff fought his well-funded Republican opponent’s attempts to paint him as soft on crime. He campaigned on his support for the three-strikes law and the death penalty. His election was a victory for California Democrats, who increased their majority in the Legislature, as well as a personal victory: Schiff had run for office, and lost, three times before.
He arrived in Sacramento in 1997 as the youngest member of the Senate — determined, he said, to deter crime rather than just prosecute crimes that had already been committed.
Nearly 40% of the 142 bills Schiff introduced during his four-year term were related to policing, criminal procedure and public safety, including efforts to stiffen penalties for some offenses by children, to build and renovate juvenile halls, and to expand crime-prevention services for at-risk teenagers, a review of his legislative history shows.
Schiff in 1999, two years after joining the state Senate with the aim of deterring rather than just prosecuting crimes.
(Ringo H.W. Chiu / For The Times)
“Like many Democrats, including President Biden, we wouldn’t strike the same balance today,” Schiff said. “My priority then, and my priority now, has always been to keep Californians safe and keep our communities safe. … Some of the sentencing policies of the ’90s didn’t do much to reduce crime, but they did a lot to increase incarceration. I don’t think that’s the right balance.”
Schiff’s long legislative history is both an advantage and a liability as he vies for an open U.S. Senate seat following the death of Dianne Feinstein. His evolution on criminal justice issues hews with the leftward swing of California Democrats, who have signaled through statewide ballot initiatives and the election of progressive prosecutors that the state’s “tough on crime” era is over.
But after decades of public opinion steadily shifting away from the policies of the ’90s, the pendulum “seems to be swinging slightly back,” said Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist who teaches political communication at USC and UC Berkeley. He pointed to recent debates over changes to Proposition 47, the 10-year-old law that reduced some felonies to misdemeanors — discussions that he said “would not have taken place several years ago.”
If the Senate race had occurred in 2020, amid the nationwide upheaval and demands for criminal justice reform that followed the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd, Schiff’s background as a prosecutor and a self-described law enforcement Democrat “might end up being much bigger issues,” Schnur said.
Progressive criminal justice advocates have accused Schiff of pushing policies that were overly punitive, even by the standards of the ’90s.
In early 2021, Schiff supporters began floating his name as a possibility for California attorney general after then-Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra was tapped to become Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services. When criminal justice activists caught wind of the effort, they sent a searing open letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom decrying Schiff’s track record and describing him as “not only supportive of, but deeply invested in, creating our current system of incarceration.” Newsom instead picked state Assemblymember Rob Bonta, an advocate for abolishing the death penalty and eliminating cash bail.
Schiff speaks with community activists in August as he tours Inland Empire neighborhoods affected by giant warehouses.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
But Schiff was far from being out of step with his party, said former San Fernando Valley lawmaker Bob Hertzberg, who chaired the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee at the time. He said Schiff was “middle of the road” among the Democrats of the late ’90s.
“Everybody was doing tough-on-crime stuff. It was a different world,” Hertzberg said. Their constituents were worried about surging crime, fueled in part by the crack cocaine epidemic. In the early ’90s, the city of Los Angeles alone saw more than 1,000 homicides a year.
Some of Schiff’s earliest and most punitive bills didn’t become law, including one that sought to try children as young as 14 as adults in criminal court in murder and rape cases. Nor did a bill that would have required that children who committed serious offenses at school be sent to juvenile detention or military-run “boot camps.”
“He wasn’t just a bystander in the ’90s, getting swept along in the punitive approach to public safety,” said USC law professor Jody Armour. “He was really at the vanguard — one of the leading voices in promoting those kinds of policies.”
Schiff also introduced bills to clarify and expand the state’s three-strikes policy and lift the five-year limit on sentencing enhancements for nonviolent crimes, opening the door to longer prison sentences. Both became law.
In 2000, Schiff’s last year in Sacramento, Democratic Gov. Gray Davis signedthe Schiff-Cárdenas Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act. The bill, which set aside $121.3 million annually for local policing and another $121.3 million for programs aimed at curbing youth crime and delinquency, was believed to be the country’s largest source of funding at the time for youth crime prevention and intervention.
Democrats in Sacramento had decided that juvenile justice reform was “an area where the voters would be with us,” even if the state didn’t support overhauling the three-strikes law, said then-Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa. Efforts to pay for anything other than incarceration were “progressive stuff,” he said.
U.S. Rep. Tony Cárdenas, then a member of the state Assembly representing the San Fernando Valley, said that when he backed juvenile justice reform, some of his colleagues ribbed him for supporting what they called “hug-a-thug” programs. Cárdenas, who has endorsed Schiff in the Senate race, said he wanted Schiff to co-sponsor the bill because his background as a prosecutor would help deflect criticisms that alternatives to incarceration were soft on crime.
Counties used the funding for gang-intervention efforts, drug counseling, mental health screenings and a wide array of other services, including after-school and nonprofit programs. Studies later found that children in those programs were less likely to be arrested or incarcerated and more likely to complete any court-ordered community service.
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As lead manager in former President Trump’s first impeachment trial, Schiff urged senators to convict Trump, saying he “has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again.”
(Senate Television via AP)
Since he arrived in Washington in 2001, after what was then the most expensive House race in history, Schiff has mostly left behind courtroom issues in favor of bills focused on broader law enforcement and criminal justice policies, including police accountability.
In 2011, he pushed the FBI to widen its use of familial DNA — in which investigators trying to identify crime suspects through their genetic material search for potential relatives in government databases. And after a national scandal erupted over a years-long backlog of more than 13,000 rape kits at the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Schiff secured funding to help process them.
As grainy cellphone videos of police shootings began to appear, shocking “the conscience of the country,” Schiff said, he became convinced that the U.S. needed police reform. After Michael Brown was shot to death by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer in 2014, Schiff led members of Congress in pushing for a federal grant program to equip police departments with body-worn cameras.
In the summer of 2020, amid the mass protests calling for criminal justice reform after Floyd was killed by police, Schiff made the rare move of withdrawing his endorsement of then-L.A. County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey in her contentious reelection fight against progressive challenger George Gascón. Since his election, Gascón has faced two failed recall attempts. Schiff has not endorsed Gascón’s bid for reelection.
Schiff voted for bills that would have decriminalized marijuana nationally and ended the federal sentencing disparity between drug offenses involving crack and powder cocaine. He was also one of 190 original co-sponsors of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would ban no-knock warrants in federal drug cases and create a national database of complaints and records of police misconduct.
Schiff’s view on the death penalty is among his biggest changes since his days as a federal prosecutor. He said he wrestled with the issue for years and no longer supports capital punishment.
“There was certainly a time when I supported the death penalty for those who killed cops and those who killed kids,” Schiff said this week. But over time, he said, he “came to lose confidence” in how the law was applied, in part because DNA evidence showed that “too many people on death row were innocent,” and because executions disproportionately affected people of color.
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Those difficult issues, however, were not what launched Schiff into national prominence.
Schiff, then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, earned both admiration and animosity for his role in Trump’s first impeachment.
(Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)
After Democrats took back the House in 2018, he became chairman of the Intelligence Committee. He developed a national profile through his clashes with Trump and regular appearances on cable news shows.
Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Schiff as lead manager of Trump’s first impeachment trial. Democrats had accused Trump of abusing his office when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son Hunter while Trump was withholding crucial military aid. A second article of impeachment accused Trump of obstructing Congress’ investigation into the alleged scheme by refusing to release subpoenaed documents or to allow current and former aides to testify.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), who worked as an impeachment manager alongside Schiff, said he was thorough and professional, and had a “tremendous command of the facts.” Trump’s animosity and the death threats that the team received, she said, “steeled [Schiff] to stand up for the truth.”
Not visible during the televised hearings, Lofgren said, was that Schiff was in excruciating pain due to a dental emergency. Schiff said he alternated between Tylenol and Advil every four hours until he could make it to the dentist for a root canal the weekend before closing arguments. At one point, he recalled, fellow impeachment manager Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) gave him a pep talk: “Hey, this is like an NBA championship. You got to play through the pain.”
Republicans reclaimed the House majority in 2020, and in 2023 removed Schiff from the Intelligence Committee.
He had said publicly that there was “significant” and “compelling” evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin in the 2016 election.
Robert S. Mueller III, the Justice Department’s special counsel in that case, found that Russia had intervened on the Trump campaign’s behalf, and that the campaign had welcomed the help. But Mueller did not recommend that the Justice Department charge any Americans.
Reporters question Schiff in June about Republicans’ move to censure him. “I wear this partisan vote as a badge of honor,” he said after the resolution passed on a party-line vote.
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
Last year, the GOP-led House voted to censure Schiff, approving a resolution that said he had “misled the American people and brought disrepute upon the House of Representatives.” As then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy read out the vote count — 213 to 209, along party lines — Democrats crowded the House floor, chanting: “Shame! Shame! Shame!”
Republicans continue to accuse Schiff of being unfit to hold public office. During Senate candidates’ first debate last month, GOP hopeful Steve Garvey told Schiff: “Sir, you lied to 300 million people. You can’t take that back.”
But to Schiff, the censure is proof of a job done right.
After its passage, he rose before his colleagues and said:
“Today, I wear this partisan vote as a badge of honor, knowing that I have lived my oath, knowing that I have done my duty to hold a dangerous and out-of-control president accountable, and knowing that I would do so again, in a heartbeat, if the circumstances should ever require it.”
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Democrats splintered over a resolution seeking to block the U.S. from assisting Israel’s war against Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist group, on Thursday.
The measure, offered by progressive Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., would require President Donald Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from Lebanon. For months, Israel and Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group and Iranian proxy, have been at war in southern Lebanon, but the United States has not joined the conflict.
A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., rejected the measure. Critics argued the resolution could aid Hezbollah and potentially hamstring U.S. military operations in the country.
Tlaib’s resolution failed 92-324, with more than half of House Democrats joining nearly all Republicans to vote it down.
The Lebanon war powers resolution divided Democrats, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., joining Republicans in rejecting the measure. (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg)
REP RASHIDA TLAIB MOVES TO BLOCK US OPERATIONS IN LEBANON BUT IGNORES HEZBOLLAH
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., an Israel critic, was the lone Republican to support Tlaib’s measure. Meanwhile, Reps. Derek Tran, D-Calif., and Betty McCollum, D-Minn., voted present.
House Democratic leaders said shortly before the vote they would oppose Tlaib’s resolution and work with the progressive lawmaker on a narrower measure exempting some U.S. military operations in the country. Their statement also denounced Hezbollah as a “violent terrorist organization” and a “sworn enemy of the United States.”
Tlaib, who has accused Israel of committing “ethnic cleansing” in Lebanon, did not mention Hezbollah in her resolution. She and other proponents of the measure also avoided discussing the Iranian proxy force during heated floor debate over the measure.
Republicans highlighted the omission and accused the legislation’s supporters of serving as “proxies for Hezbollah.”
“Apparently they don’t want to see Israel killing Hezbollah, even though it’s Hezbollah that is killing Israeli children, Israeli adults, Israeli elders,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., said Wednesday, referring to his Democratic colleagues.
Tlaib asserted that her resolution would only affect U.S. forces actively engaged in hostilities. Republicans, however, disputed that claim and suggested it would hurt U.S. efforts to counter Hezbollah.
“It doesn’t say anything about [whether] you can keep the Marines that are in the embassy,” Mast said, referring to the U.S. embassy in Beirut. “That’s a pretty big oversight. It doesn’t say anything about whether we can keep United States armed forces that are training missions with the LAF [Lebanese Armed Forces]. Again, pretty big oversight.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, attempted to bar U.S. forces from joining Israel’s war in Lebanon. (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg)
RASHIDA TLAIB HIT WITH HOUSE CENSURE THREAT, ACCUSED OF ‘CELEBRATING TERRORISM’ IN PRO-PALESTINIAN SPEECH
The debate turned personal when Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, linked Tlaib to Hezbollah.
“Hezbollah is a terrorist organization … and its members are butchers that you like to hang out with to a certain extent,” the Ohio lawmaker said, referring to Tlaib.
A shouting match between the two then broke out, with Tlaib demanding that Miller’s remarks be stricken from the record.
The presiding chair ultimately complied with her request, but Miller doubled down on his remarks.
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“Yes, I said it. I own it, and I stand by it,” Mast said on behalf of Miller on the floor.
Tlaib’s failed war powers resolution comes as Iran has sought to tie Israel’s invasion of Lebanon to its ceasefire negotiations with the United States.
Hezbollah, which has long helped Iran project power in the region, rejected a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon’s government Thursday.
WASHINGTON — Initial efforts in the Senate failed Thursday to block the $1.8-billion fund that the Trump administration has sought to establish to pay people who claim the government wronged them, though further attempts were likely to come Thursday afternoon.
Republicans narrowly voted down a Democratic amendment to ban the payout fund and then Democrats killed a Republican amendment, which would have prohibited the use of federal money for the fund but would have sent $1.7 billion to the Justice Department’s fraud division.
It was the second effort in Congress to rebuke President Trump in two days, following the House vote Wednesday to rein in Trump’s war powers in Iran.
The dueling amendments were proposed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). They were attached to the reconciliation bill that would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, a high priority for Republicans.
The votes came as the Senate began a “vote-a-rama,” during which lawmakers were expected to propose a stream of amendments to the immigration bill on various topics.
The Trump administration’s plan for the payment fund — widely seen as a way for Trump to compensate his political allies, including those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — set off particular ire from some GOP lawmakers.
The plan has fueled growing unrest within parts of Trump’s party over his governance, compounded by the president’s endorsement of primary challengers to Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), as well as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), which angered some Republican senators.
Cassidy, who lost his primary and has since voiced strong opposition to Trump’s $1.8-billion fund, became a key player in the Thursday votes, voting down Schumer’s amendment but supporting Tillis’.
On Wednesday, Cassidy joined with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to argue in a court filing that the $1.8-billion fund circumvents Congress’ authority and violates the Constitution’s spending and appropriations clauses.
“It is an unconstitutional attempt to spend the People’s money without Congressional approval,” Cassidy and Booker wrote in an amicus brief filed in the federal court case challenging the fund.
The fund was created by the Justice Department to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. Trump and his sons agreed to drop their personal lawsuit against the government in exchange for the creation of the $1.776-billion fund. Critics immediately questioned the plan, and it drew a rare backlash from Republicans.
In late May, GOP senators derailed plans to vote on the immigration bill over their displeasure with the payout fund and with Trump’s desire to use taxpayer funds for his planned White House ballroom. Senate Republicans removed the ballroom funding from the immigration package Wednesday, another setback for Trump.
The Trump administration sought to back away from its plans for the fund this week, following bipartisan outcry and a federal court ruling that temporarily blocked any payouts from the fund. Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said Tuesday the administration would end its plans to move ahead with the concept.
But Trump on Wednesday told reporters he didn’t know whether the fund was dead, calling it “a beautiful thing.”
After Schumer proposed the first amendment to ban the fund Thursday morning, the Senate came to a standstill as three key Republican senators deliberated. Schumer framed his effort to ban the fund Thursday as a way to force a referendum on Trump’s plan.
The amendment “offers Republicans a choice: Do you support Donald Trump’s $2 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund, or do you want to protect the American people and their paychecks?” Schumer said on the Senate floor before the vote.
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) urged Republicans to reject the amendment, saying Democrats were planning to “play so many games” on Thursday during the marathon session.
“We are going to fund immigration enforcement and border patrol, and I urge my Republican colleagues to stay united on that singular mission,” Moreno said.
The amendment failed after Cassidy voted against it. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska voted in favor.
Schumer’s amendment was uniformly supported by Democrats, including California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla.
Tillis, who also voted against Schumer’s amendment, immediately proposed his amendment. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) urged Democrats to oppose it, saying that the proposal would create “a new slush fund” by giving the money to the Justice Department.
“We heard over the last 48 hours that the acting attorney general said that this fund’s not moving forward. All this amendment does is codify what I believe the policy of the DOJ is,” Tillis said on the floor before voting began on his amendment. “This [fund] is unpopular, this administration has said they’re not moving forward with it; this is an opportunity for us to put it to bed.”
Responded Merkley: “Taking one slush fund and eliminating it and then creating a new slush fund still under control of the attorney general is not the way to go. The way to go is to get rid of these slush funds altogether.”
Trump has faced a recent string of failures, including the House vote Wednesday, a court ruling to remove his name from the Kennedy Center and a record-low approval rating among Americans as concern rises about economic issues, gas prices and Trump’s war with Iran.
On Wednesday, Trump lashed out against the four Republicans who backed the House war powers resolution, calling it “an unpatriotic thing” to do and calling the vote “meaningless.”
“They’re GRANDSTANDERS! They should be ashamed of themselves. MAGA!!! President DJT,” Trump wrote.
Times staff writer Ana Ceballos, in Washington, contributed to this report.
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Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has emerged as one of the party’s fastest-rising political figures, drawing national attention for his populist message and outsider image.
But as his profile has grown, so has scrutiny of his past conduct, with controversies ranging from sexually explicit messages and offensive social media posts to a Nazi-linked tattoo and campaign staff upheaval.
PLATNER CONTROVERSIES FUEL SPECULATION ABOUT LITTLE-KNOWN MAINE BALLOT REPLACEMENT PROVISION
In continued clean-up of those scandals, Platner came to Washington, D.C. on Tuesday to huddle with party figures at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee headquarters just one week before his primary election.
The Marine veteran and oyster farmer has defended himself against the criticism and retained the support of prominent Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Still, some have questioned whether the allegations could complicate Democrats’ efforts to unseat Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races.
Here’s a look at the major controversies that have engulfed Platner’s campaign.
Explicit text messages and sexting allegations
Senate candidate Graham Platner is under fire, but it was his wife Amy Gertner coming out with a controversial five-minute social media post by the campaign to denounce the ‘attacks’ while she did not deny the allegations of infidelity in a new marriage. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The most recent controversy surrounding Platner stems from reports that he exchanged sexually explicit messages with multiple women during his marriage, an issue that campaign aides were reportedly aware of as his Senate bid was taking shape.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, informed a campaign aide about the text exchanges shortly after he launched his Senate bid as staffers were assessing potential political liabilities.
According to the report, Gertner discovered the messages months after the couple married in 2024 and disclosed their existence before her husband held a campaign rally alongside progressive Sen. Sanders. The campaign told Politico that the aide viewed the matter as a private issue between the couple and did not raise concerns about it publicly.
SENATE CANDIDATE GRAHAM PLATNER SENT EXPLICIT TEXTS TO MULTIPLE WOMEN WHILE MARRIED, WIFE SAYS: REPORT
Platner’s campaign later confirmed the existence of the text exchanges to Politico.
He also told Fox News Digital in a statement: “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.”
“I’ve learned throughout this campaign is that people don’t care about gossip or headlines, they care that you’re fighting for their hospitals, their paycheck, their kids… 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 added.
In a statement to the Journal, Gertner criticized the disclosure of the information, saying she had shared “deeply personal details” about her marriage with someone she considered a friend, only to see those details become public.
She revealed that the two attended couple’s counseling, worked through the issues in their marriage and have since emerged as a stronger couple.
“I know who Graham is. I know the man I married and the husband he has been to me on the best and the worst days of my life,” Gertner said. “That hasn’t changed, and it won’t.”
Nazi-linked tattoo
Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, points to a covered tattoo that was previously recognized as a Nazi symbol during an interview in Portland, Maine, on Oct. 22, 2025. (WGME via AP)
Platner’s campaign also faced intense scrutiny after it was revealed he once had a skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his chest closely resembling the “Totenkopf” symbol used by Hitler’s SS paramilitary forces.
The Maine Democrat said he got the tattoo during a “night of drinking” while on leave in Croatia in 2007 as a Marine and claimed he was entirely unaware of its meaning at the time.
In an Instagram video posted in May, Platner elaborated on the tattoo’s origins. He explained that he merely selected the design from a flash tattoo wall while “carousing” with fellow Marines in Split, Croatia.
“We thought it looked cool,” he downplayed.
Platner said he was later “appalled” to learn the image resembled a Nazi symbol, arguing that his life and career have been defined by opposition to fascism, racism and Nazism. He also noted that he was never questioned about the tattoo during his military service.
MAINE DEM SENATE HOPEFUL BACKED BY BERNIE SANDERS APOLOGIZES FOR NAZI-STYLE TATTOO, VOWS TO STAY IN RACE
Rather than undergo removal, Platner said he chose to cover the tattoo because tattoo removal services were not readily available near his rural Maine home.
“Going to a tattoo removal place is going to take a while,” he told The Associated Press. “I wanted this thing off my body.”
The symbol was ultimately covered with a tattoo featuring a Celtic knot and images of dogs, which Platner said were meant to honor his family pets.
Deleted Reddit posts reveal offensive comments
U.S. Senate candidate from Maine Graham Platner speaks during a campaign event on May 17, 2026, in Portland, Maine. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The keystone scrutiny Platner has faced during his bid stemmed from thousands of now-deleted Reddit posts that resurfaced after he launched his Senate campaign.
In posts first reported by CNN and Politico, Platner referred to himself as a “communist” and “socialist” and endorsed the slogan “all cops are b—–ds.”
In other posts, he argued that those who “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history” and said that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice.”
DELETED POSTS URGING VIOLENCE HAUNT DEMOCRATIC SENATE HOPEFUL IN MAINE RACE
The posts under his since-retired username “P-hustle” were deleted before Platner announced his Democratic Senate bid in August.
The candidate has since addressed the posts multiple times, telling CNN and Politico that he was “f—ing around on the internet” during a period when he felt “lost and very disillusioned with our government who sent me overseas to watch my friends die.”
“I made dumb jokes and picked fights,” Platner said. “But of course I’m not a socialist. I’m a small business owner, a Marine Corps veteran, and a retired s—poster.”
In the posts Platner made crude comments about masturbating in port-a-potties and claimed a U.S. service member who took enemy fire in Afghanistan “didn’t deserve to live.”
GRAHAM PLATNER VOWS TO ‘COME AFTER’ BEZOS AS SENATE HOPEFUL ESCALATES BILLIONAIRE TAX FIGHT
The controversies have done little to erode Platner’s standing within the Democratic Party as he has continued to attract national attention and grassroots support in the Democratic primary bid to challenge Sen. Collins for her seat.
Since former Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills halted her campaign in April, much of the party establishment has consolidated behind Platner, and national Democrats have continued to support his candidacy despite the flurry of scandals.
The steady stream of allegations and past controversies has also drawn attention to a little-known provision in Maine election law that allows political parties to replace a nominee under certain circumstances after a primary election.
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Under state law, a candidate who wins a primary and subsequently withdraws by 5 p.m. on July 13 can be replaced by a nominee selected by party officials. Any replacement candidate must then be chosen by 5 p.m. on July 27.
There is currently no indication that Platner plans to withdraw from the race, and the Democratic hopeful has repeatedly vowed to continue his campaign. Still, the provision has drawn renewed interest as questions persist about whether additional revelations could complicate his candidacy.
Platner’s campaign did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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