Marine Veteran Graham Platner Bartended at Capitol Hill Dive Bar Tune Inn While Battling PTSD, 2011–2016

Graham Platner worked at The Tune Inn, a Pennsylvania Avenue dive bar popular with Capitol Hill staffers and journalists, from 2011 to 2016. Platner, now 41, began bartending there after returning from a Marine tour in Afghanistan. He was in his late twenties to early thirties during those years and remained employed at the bar for at least five years.

New York Post reported that Platner’s heavy drinking during this period led to a DUI arrest in 2011. He was convicted that year and his driver’s license was suspended for one year. Wayne Laugesen, an independent journalist and strategic communications consultant who lived three blocks from the bar, described Platner’s interactions with customers.

“Platner was just kind of dark, you’d try to turn up a little conversation, and he wouldn’t give anything back, no smile, no acknowledgement,” Laugesen said. ” Laugesen and his wife began taking their business to the Hawk N Dove next door whenever they saw Platner behind the bar. Platner was both a patron and bartender at the Tune Inn.

Accounts state he often took his shirt off while drinking late at night. ” He stated he worked as a bartender and that black patrons usually tipped between 0-5 percent, while every now and again one would leave 15-20 percent. Platner became friends with Ryan Grim at the Tune Inn.

Grim, who founded Drop Site News in 2024, later conducted one of Platner’s early national interviews. Platner’s campaign stated that he began struggling with PTSD during his bartending years. He was taking classes at George Washington University and dropped out in 2016 to move back to Maine.

His campaign did not return The Post’s request for comment.