A former girlfriend of Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Graham Platner featured in a New York Times article has blasted the paper on social media.

Lyndsey Fifield, a conservative activist, says the paper betrayed her trust in what she called “a set up.”

“The journalists I trusted who convinced me to share a story I never wanted to tell methodically delayed and twisted this into a gift to the Platner campaign,” Lyndsey Fifield wrote on X on June 5.

The Times article stated that the Maine candidate, who is now married, was at times violent in previous relationships.

Reporting included information gleaned from an April interview with Fifield and her personal diary. 

According to the Associated Press, Fifield dated Platner for about two years starting in 2013. She told the Times that on one occasion, Platner twisted her arm during an argument.

Fifield’s X posts accused the paper of focusing too much on her story, and not the stories of other women who had also been in past relationships with Platner. 

In addition, Fifield said the Times delayed publishing the story for weeks. She said the paper didn’t mention her support for local Democrats and did not report that she had confided in friends over the years about her past with Platner. 

Fifield also asked why the Times claimed it could not corroborate some testimony, “when I offered them sources that COULD corroborate?”

Fifield accused the Times of “shattering the trust I placed in them with the most vulnerable story of my life.”

In response, Times spokesperson Nicole Taylor said: “We published accounts provided by several women who were in romantic relationships with Graham Platner. Our story accurately presents each of these accounts as told to our reporters and according to our standards. We stand by our reporting of the accounts from Ms. Fifield and the other women, who provided a revealing look at the behavior of a major candidate for the U.S. Senate.”