Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner Claims He Covered Up Controversial Tattoo

Graham Platner revealed he got some fresh new ink ... to cover up a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol.

Platner, an oyster farmer in Maine who's currently running for U.S. Senate, caught plenty of heat this week when a video resurfaced showing him dancing shirtless at a wedding ... with a skull-and-crossbones tattoo visible on his chest, according to the Associated Press. The tattoo is of the Totenkopf, a "death's head" symbol used by Nazi SS officers in WWII and white supremacists since.

Platner has been dealing with the firestorm about the tattoo for days. He spoke to Vanity Fair for an article published Wednesday and claimed the symbol has been covered up with a new design of a Celtic knot and a dog, "because that’s far more in line with my opinions about nature and animals now than my connection to the violence that I partook in when I was a young man."

Platner said he got the original tattoo in 2007, when he was partying in Croatia with fellow Marines -- he said he was drunk when they ended up in a tattoo parlor and he picked the design off a wall of options.

Platner pointed out skull-and-crossbones tattoos are pretty popular among military -- especially combat -- personnel, and he claimed he didn't know about the negative connotations of the design he picked until it started attracting attention from the press last week.

He acknowledged the news about the tattoo -- and some resurfaced Reddit posts about sexual assault in the military -- killed a good portion of his campaign's momentum ... although he claimed he still had the support of Bernie Sanders.