Maine Dem Senate Candidate Platner Says He Forgot

Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has a new downside, and this one is tougher to delete.

New authentic reporting by The Wall Street Journal printed Friday has tied Platner to an lively profile on Kik, a messaging platform with a long and well-documented historical past of little one exploitation, and that law enforcement officers and online security advocates have repeatedly flagged as a hazard to minors.

The account, listed under the username “phustle0331,” featured a mirror selfie of a towel-clad man. It was linked to other online handles related with Platner, and remained lively as not too long ago as this week.

When pressed, Platner’s marketing campaign confirmed to the WSJ the account belonged to him. The clarification:

“The candidate had long deleted the app from his phone but hadn’t deactivated his account.”

The account was reportedly created on June 26, 2016. By that level, Kik had already earned a national popularity as a platform used by predators to anonymously goal minors and had drawn repeated condemnation from little one security organizations.

Kik’s design has always centered on anonymity. No real title. No cellphone quantity. Just a username and a stranger on the other end. The National Center on intimacyual Exploitation has called it a “Predator’s Paradise,” describing its core operate plainly:

“It’s designed to be connecting people with strangers.”

Roughly 70 p.c of customers had been between ages 13 and 24 before age restrictions had been launched. Federal prosecutors have famous that Kik “commonly comes up” across little one exploitation instances nationwide. Court paperwork described the app as “frequently used by individuals who trade child pornography because it is free, simple to set up, easily accessible, potentially anonymous.” 

And when offenders had been convicted, their profiles stayed up and accessible long after sentencing.

Maine has not been spared. In 2025, a Maine man was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison after prosecutors proved he produced little one inappropriate abuse videos for other Kik customers. A separate case concerned a man accused of photographing kids at sporting occasions and utilizing artificial intelligence to inappropriateize those photos.

Which brings us back to Platner. A person operating for the U.S. Senate, on a platform of combating for working people, maintained an lively profile on an app that federal prosecutors have spent years describing as a recurring device in little one exploitation instances and that little one security organizations have labeled a “Predator’s Paradise.” His clarification? He deleted the app. Just never closed the account. 

The Kik profile will not be an remoted footnote. Deleted Reddit posts beforehand surfaced, in which Platner called himself a “communist” and blamed inappropriate assault victims for their own assaults. His spouse confirmed that she disclosed his specific texts to other girls to the marketing campaign herself, as RedState wrote earlier on Saturday. Each time, the marketing campaign’s reply has been the same: previous news, political hit job, transfer on.

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The Kik profile is tougher to wave away. This will not be an indignant Reddit remark from 2021. It is an account on a platform that federal prosecutors have spent years flagging as a device for little one exploitation, and it was still lively this week.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) has called Platner’s controversies “disqualifying.” Despite that, a University of New Hampshire ballot still exhibits him main Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) by 9 factors. That quantity will imply nothing if Maine voters resolve that sustaining a profile on a platform law enforcement calls a “Predator’s Paradise” will not be the sort of judgment they need in the U.S. Senate.

Platner’s protection is that he forgot to close the account. Maine’s kids deserved better than that excuse. So do Maine’s voters.

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