{"id":250458,"date":"2026-06-01T04:11:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T04:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/250458\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T04:11:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T04:11:37","slug":"mamdani-spin-doctor-accused-of-threatening-graham-platners-ex-staffer-before-she-blew-whistle-on-sexting-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/250458\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani spin doctor accused of threatening Graham Platner’s ex-staffer before she blew whistle on sexting scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Mayor Mamdani\u2019s whiz-kid spin doctor has been accused of pressuring Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner\u2019s ex political director<\/a> to lie about the horny oyster farmer\u2019s sexting scandal \u2014 and threatened her if she didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Morris Katz, the 27-year-old hot-shot strategist who helped catapult Mamdani<\/a> to Gracie Mansion, allegedly pressed former Platner campaign staffer Genevieve McDonald to deny the sexting scandal to the press.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust want to be clear on where we are right now,\u201d Katz wrote to McDonald through a third party, according to messages reported by Bangor Daily News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Graham Platner is in hot water after revelations about him sexting other women while married. REUTERS<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the story goes in its current iteration, we\u2019ll communicate directly on the record, and by name, that Genevieve violated the personal trust of Amy and Graham and shared explicit falsehoods to sabotage the campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katz, who owns the firm Fight Agency, is working for Platner \u2014 who is the de facto Dem nominee for Maine\u2019s Senate race.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old strategist\u2019s warning was relayed through an adviser to Maine congressional hopeful Jordan Wood, according to docs obtained by BDN. <\/p>\n

McDonald had worked on Wood\u2019s campaign until Saturday.<\/p>\n

Morris Katz has helped elevate lefty, populist candidates across the country. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

She was one of three officials who quit Platner\u2019s campaign last fall after wild details about his past emerged.<\/p>\n

Katz had been incensed after the Platner campaign caught wind of a forthcoming Wall Street Journal story about Platner sexting up to a dozen women after marrying his wife in 2023.<\/p>\n

The Katz demanded that McDonald call up the Wall Street Journal to deny the sexting scandal to the outlet and record herself doing that so she could send it to the campaign, BDN reported.<\/p>\n

But McDonald didn\u2019t take kindly to being threatened and instead went on the record with the New York Times, which confirmed the bombshell story shortly after the Wall Street Journal reported it.<\/p>\n

Genevieve McDonald decided to go on the record after facing the threat. Portland Press Herald via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The outlet reported that Platner had sexted as many as a dozen women, though his campaign claimed it was only six.<\/p>\n

McDonald recounted how Platner\u2019s wife informed her that she discovered her husband had sent sexually explicit images to various women while the campaign was doing internal opposition research to prepare for potential dirt his rivals might be able to dig up.<\/p>\n

Katz had raged against McDonald on social media. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s no one\u2019s f\u2014ing business what happened in Graham & Amy\u2019s marriage before he was ever a candidate for office,\u201d he fumed. \u201cThere should be no place in our politics for incompetent, opportunistic operatives who violate privacy, betray trust, and prioritize vengeance over decency.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no one\u2019s fucking business what happened in Graham & Amy\u2019s marriage before he was ever a candidate for office. <\/p>\n

There should be no place in our politics for incompetent, opportunistic operatives who violate privacy, betray trust, and prioritize vengeance over decency.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Morris Katz (@katz_morris) May 30, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

The Post contacted the Platner campaign and attempted to reach Katz for comment. <\/p>\n

Platner, 41, shied away from the media during his campaign event Sunday, and his team\u2019s main response to the bombshell stories came from his wife, who cut a 5-minute video addressing the controversy by scolding the media and McDonald \u2014 although not by name.<\/p>\n

The Marine veteran has faced a myriad of controversies, including Reddit posts downplaying sexual assault, defending soldiers\u00a0urinating on dead Taliban soldiers<\/a>, musing about graffiti of men\u2019s genitalia<\/a>, calling war \u201cthe most enjoyable experience,\u201d contending that white Americans \u201cactually are\u201d racist and stupid, among others.<\/p>\n

Recently, it emerged that he mocked a Purple Heart soldier<\/a>\u00a0who captured wild helmet footage of himself moving into the open to steer Taliban fire away from his fellow soldiers.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most infamous of all, Platner is revealed to have had a tattoo on his chest resembling a Totenkopf\u00a0or \u201cdeath\u2019s head\u201d\u00a0symbol used by the Nazi SS. The oyster farmer claims to have gotten that tattoo in Croatia while drunk in 2007 and denied advanced knowledge of its Nazi\u00a0links.<\/p>\n

Since then, he has inked over it with what he has described as a \u201cCeltic knot with some imagery around dogs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Platner has a 7.8 percentage point polling edge over incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine),\u00a0according to the latest RealClearPolitics<\/a>\u00a0aggregate of polls. Collins has a history of dramatically overperforming the RCP aggregate in past races, particularly her 2020 reelection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Mayor Mamdani\u2019s whiz-kid spin doctor has been accused of pressuring Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner\u2019s ex…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5030,5315,46937,9,11,10,87,4371,855,58],"class_list":["post-250458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-democrat","tag-maine","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics","tag-scandal","tag-senate","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}