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A woman who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies. The woman, a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, detailed the alleged incident to POLITICO in three interviews over the past two weeks. POLITICO also spoke with a man Racicot dated and confided in the years after the alleged incident, and reviewed documents, including emails between Racicot and her therapist and messages between Racicot and an acquaintance whom she warned against getting involved with Platner years before he ran for office. Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual. “I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’” Platner denied the allegations. “These allegations are troubling, serious, and false. Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue,” he said in a statement. Racicot previously described “reckless” and “unsettling” behavior by Platner to The New York Times, but says she didn’t go public with the specific assault claim because she didn’t want to be known as a rape victim. Racicot said she later felt compelled to go public about her experience because the reaction to the Times story was dominated by controversy about another woman, Lyndsey Fifield, who alleged Platner mistreated her and faced attacks because of her ties to the Republican Party. (Contacted by POLITICO, Fifield stood by the allegations she made to the Times and declined to comment further.) “My part of the story was just a read-over,” Racicot said in an interview. “And the story was Lyndsey, and the accusations of her being politically motivated.” Racicot said she was torn over coming forward in part because she agrees with Platner politically. “One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” she said. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.” In a statement, the Platner campaign reiterated his denial and accused critics of trying to drive him out of the race. “These allegations are very serious and Graham vigorously denies them. They are also coached and coordinated by out of state establishment operatives. For a year, opponents of this campaign have thrown everything they can at Graham –– calling him a Nazi, a war criminal, and a communist. None of it has been true and this is no different. It is not a coincidence that this story comes a week before the ballot deadline, just as the previous false allegations came a week before the primary. Graham began this campaign to fight for a Maine where everyone is treated with dignity and where Mainers are put first, and no amount of desperate smears will stop this movement from seeing that vision through.” Platner, an oysterman and political newcomer when he launched his Senate campaign last August, easily won the Democratic primary last month to face GOP Sen. Susan Collins in one of the nation’s most highly watched Senate races. His remarkable rise has been tainted by controversies, including offensive online comments and allegations of past mistreatment of women. He has not previously been accused of sexual assault. The Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran has linked some of his behavior to mental health struggles and alcohol abuse. But he says he’s changed and has denied previous claims that he was abusive to women. Racicot told POLITICO she connected with Platner on the dating app Bumble in 2019 and had consensual relations with him prior to the night he allegedly assaulted her. That night in late 2021, she said she had exchanged text messages with him and told him not to come over, saying she wasn’t in the mood for company. Later that evening, she said she realized when she heard a sound on the stairs that he had let himself into her house, which was unlocked. Platner came up the stairs, Racicot said, to where she was on a couch. He got on top of her and kept grabbing her, she said, while she repeatedly told him to stop and that she wasn’t interested. Racicot said she smelled alcohol on his breath and believed he was “almost blackout drunk” because Platner ignored her protests and continued to grab her after knocking over an antique sewing kit, spilling small needles everywhere. “I had been telling him these words, like: ‘No, don’t,’” she recalled. “And, the look on his face and realizing what was happening, I just realized that, like, I am in a situation where there’s no consent here,” she said. Racicot said she tried to separate herself from Platner by telling him she couldn’t be in that room anymore, after which he followed her to her bedroom and had sex with her against her will. She said he also ejaculated inside of her despite her telling him not to, as she was not using birth control at the time. She went to clean herself up, she said, and when she returned, Platner had fallen asleep. She contemplated waking him up to kick him out, but worried he could hurt someone driving in the state he was in. The following morning, she said, Platner tried to put his arm around her and she pushed him away. She said she asked him whether he remembered what had happened the previous night; according to Racicot, Platner said he didn’t remember. Racicot said she told him to leave and never contact her again. Racicot said she waited several weeks until she got her period to ensure she wasn’t pregnant, then sent Platner a private message on Instagram saying that the encounter was not consensual and she did not want to hear from him ever again. Racicot had no further contact with him after that, she said. Racicot said she later deleted all her texts and social media correspondence with Platner as she tried to move on from the assault, and said she has not been able to recover the Instagram messages she sent him about the incident. In the weeks after the alleged assault, Racicot said she considered going to the police but struggled with shock and confusion about what had happened to her and did not file a police report. Even as time passed, she said she felt uncomfortable potentially telling a police officer about such a personal experience, and feared retaliation from Platner. At first, she confided only in her therapist, who she continues to see. Racicot showed POLITICO recent emails with her therapist in which Racicot explained she was talking to the media about her relationship with Platner and the “sa/rape,” using an abbreviation for sexual assault. In the message, Racicot was not ready to go public and was seeking help corroborating her account in conversations she was having with reporters on condition of anonymity. Her therapist responded that Racicot shouldn’t have to speak publicly about a traumatic incident in order to be believed, without referencing details of any particular incident. The therapist, who POLITICO agreed not to name at her request, declined to comment when reached on Monday. Racicot also shared details about the alleged assault to the man she dated after Platner, who she began dating in 2022. The man, who was granted anonymity out of concern for his personal privacy, told POLITICO that Racicot had told him in bits and pieces about a bad experience with Platner before confiding the full details of what had happened in 2023. His account of what Racicot told him about the incident matched what Racicot told POLITICO. Racicot shared with POLITICO a series of private Facebook messages she exchanged with an acquaintance in 2023, about a year and a half after the alleged assault and well before Platner launched his political career, in which she cautioned the acquaintance against getting involved with Platner. In the messages, Racicot said she had “ended up in a bad situation with him,” describing Platner as “consensually careless” and saying he “doesn’t listen to you when drunk.” Reached by POLITICO, the acquaintance said she received the messages but declined to comment; POLITICO granted her anonymity at her request to protect her privacy in her Maine community. POLITICO also spoke with a friend Racicot had told about the alleged assault last summer, shortly after Platner launched his campaign. The friend, to whom POLITICO granted anonymity due to fear of social and professional backlash, recalled Racicot telling her about the incident, including that Platner had been “very drunk and wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Racicot said she was contacted by the New York Times in the spring and shared off the record that Platner had assaulted her. She told the Times that she had some positive memories of her relationship with Platner but thought he did not respect women and had cut off contact with him after an incident in 2021 when Platner had come over drunk; but the Times article stated that Racicot “declined to elaborate” about what had happened, only describing his behavior as “reckless” and “unsettling.” A spokesperson for the Times declined to comment. After the publication of the Times report, Racicot connected with Cheyenne Hunt, a progressive Democratic lawyer who founded the nonprofit Reckoning Action, which launched earlier this year to fight misogyny. Hunt, who had endorsed Platner last fall but renounced her support for him after the Times article, previously supported women who came forward with assault allegations against former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), earlier this year, prompting him to drop out of the California gubernatorial primary and resign from Congress. NBC News previously reported that Hunt was working with multiple women who had past relationships with Platner. Hunt connected POLITICO to Racicot. “Reckoning Action exists to confront misogyny in American life in all forms and manifestations, including in bad actors being elected to positions of power,” Hunt said. “We became aware of allegations before ever being connected with Jenny, and have been in contact with multiple women with really troubling allegations, and it just became clear that this is someone who’s not fit to hold public office.” After the Times report last month, Platner had said that allegations of physical misconduct were “simply not true.” And his allies seized on Fifield’s conservative political affiliations to suggest that her allegations against him in the Times article were motivated by politics. On MS NOW last month, after The New York Times report, Platner denied claims that he had physically mistreated women. “Anything alleging physicality, anything alleging that I knew what my tattoo was, these are the statements of somebody who’s politically motivated,” he told MS NOW, alluding to unrelated allegations about a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol. Platner had the tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol covered up last fall and said he had not known what the symbol meant. Racicot said she was bothered by Platner’s public denial that he had been physical towards women. “I know that he is capable of putting his hands on women,” she said. “So I don’t believe that to be the truth.”

BRUSSELS — The European Commission’s bid to advance Serbia’s EU membership application is set to fall short of the backing needed from member countries, exposing a growing rift over how countries should earn their way into the bloc. The Commission will ask EU ambassadors meeting in Brussels on Wednesday to approve opening a new accession negotiations “cluster” — a group of reforms candidate countries must complete before joining the bloc. However, several governments are skeptical of the move and the Netherlands is prepared to veto it, five diplomats and officials told POLITICO. They were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive closed-door talks. The disagreement reflects a broader debate over the purpose of EU enlargement. The Commission has increasingly framed expansion as a geopolitical tool to encourage countries in the bloc’s neighborhood to pursue closer ties with Europe and steer away from rival powers, according to two of the officials. Yet some member countries fear candidates could be rewarded before making sufficient progress on democratic and judicial reforms. Opening the third cluster would launch negotiations on aligning Serbia’s rules on cross-border services with the EU single market, including the recognition of professional qualifications and measures to ease doing business across borders. “The opening of Cluster 3 in Serbia’s EU accession negotiations is long overdue,” said Nemanja Starović, Serbia’s minister for EU integration. “Serbia has been effectively stalled at this exact point for nearly five years. It would be difficult to argue that the cumulative reforms carried out by the Serbian state administration since 2022 do not merit such a modest advance in the process.” Postponing the decision again, he said, would miss a chance to incentivize future reforms and “be the best possible gift to anti-European political forces, both in Serbia and across the continent.” The Commission largely agrees with that assessment. Officials in Brussels have long recommended the opening of the cluster, but the decision requires unanimity from all 27 member countries — and progress has ground to a halt over concerns about Serbia’s domestic human rights record. The Netherlands, however, will continue to oppose extending new enlargement opportunities to Serbia on its current trajectory, with diplomats from a further two EU member countries saying the push to open a `new cluster was unlikely to move forward any time soon. Advancing the membership bid of a country that maintains close relations with Russia, one said, would send the wrong message when Ukraine and Moldova are still yet to open all their formal negotiating clusters. The move to make enlargement a “geopolitical tool” to keep Serbia engaged, said one diplomat critical of the plan, only works “until they’re actually in and then it becomes a headache of geopolitical magnitude.” Conflicting assessments Belgrade’s parliament last month voted through a series of amendments relaxing controversial laws passed at the start of the year by the governing party, which legal experts said would undermine the independence of the judiciary and the fight against corruption. On top of that, officials point to almost two dozen legislative changes that have been passed to comply with EU rules, including strengthening the management of EU funds and aligning with the bloc’s internal market. Yet the Commission’s own assessments appear to point in different directions. In an internal briefing paper circulated amongst ambassadors ahead of Wednesday’s meeting and seen by POLITICO, the Commission said that “Serbia has recently implemented substantial elements of the commitments” it has made to Brussels. In summary, “following these actions the Commission assesses that Serbia has remedied the backsliding which occurred” when the laws were first introduced in January and its application should move forward. However, just weeks earlier, in a confidential report on Serbia obtained by POLITICO, the Commission reported significant human rights concerns, warning that “pressure on civil society organisations and journalists intensified, including smear campaigns against individuals and organisations advocating for the rule of law and the fight against corruption.” The analysis found that “there has been no progress in a number of large-scale corruption cases,” including in investigations around the collapse of a concrete railway station canopy in Novi Sad that killed 16 people and triggered a protest movement across the country. Without a decision to open the cluster, the Commission will instead turn to other ways to reward Belgrade for the legal changes, two of the officials said. Officials are drawing up a list of options, although it is unlikely to be presented before nationwide elections expected in the coming months after President Aleksandar Vučić’s surprise announcement he would stand down. He is expected to campaign to be prime minister. “We remain fully committed to pursuing further reforms and would be encouraged to see these efforts acknowledged through a merit-based decision,” Marko Đurić, Serbia’s foreign minister, told POLITICO. “In the case of Serbia enlargement is very obviously mutually beneficial, it is an act of strategic foresight. It is enough to take a look at the map.” “Most recently, we have taken significant legislative and institutional steps to strengthen the rule of law, responding directly to the European Commission’s recommendations,” he said.

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