The FBI was preparing a major bribery investigation that could have implicated Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins, but it was scrapped soon after Donald Trump returned to the White House, according to a report.
A damning ProPublica investigation details allegations that Collins and her team were involved in a pay-to-play scheme involving defense contractor Navatek.
The report claims that Scott Reed, head of the Collins super PAC, sought $500,000 from Navatek in 2019 to boost Collins’ re-election bid, after the senator helped the company win a multimillion-dollar Navy research contract in Maine.
In return, Navatek is reported to have said it wanted an assurance that Collins would help generate tens of millions of dollars more in federal funding for the company. After the meeting, Navatek CEO Martin Kao set up a shell company to skirt campaign finance laws that ban government contractors from making political contributions and sent $150,000 to the Collins super PAC.
Two months later, Kao informed Navatek executives that Collins had put plans in place to award the company $32 million in naval contracts.
As noted by ProPublica, a company with federal contracts offering political donations to Collins in exchange for a favor “would constitute criminal bribery.” Collins has denied any wrongdoing.
The allegations arrive at a crucial time for Collins. Her Maine Senate seat is one that Democrats believe they could flip in the Nov. 3 midterms, as the 73-year-old moderate Republican seeks a sixth six-year term in the blue state.
In 2022, a grand jury indicted Kao on suspicion of making illegal campaign contributions.
While being questioned by FBI agents and federal prosecutors, Kao said that the meeting with Reed was just one of a number of alleged pay-to-play operations involving members of Congress he was involved in.
In total, Kao and his team had donated nearly $900,000 to dozens of lawmakers, allowing the Hawaii-based Navatek to establish operations in half a dozen states with more than $40 million a year in government funding, ProPublica reported.
The FBI had gathered enough evidence that it was on the verge of launching a bribery and corruption probe that could have implicated top politicians from both political parties by the end of 2024.
However, the probe was derailed by Trump’s 2024 election victory. When the president returned to office, he gutted the Department of Justice and fired multiple workers who had worked on federal criminal cases against Trump as part of his retribution campaign.
One of the agents who had taken Kao’s confession was pushed out amid the administration’s purge of officials involved in investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
As a result of Trump reshaping the DOJ, the probe into alleged pay-to-play bribery in Congress was shuttered.
One line of inquiry the FBI wanted to probe centered on South Carolina, a state where Navatek was looking to expand. Specifically, agents wanted to look further into a steak dinner Kao had with late Sen. Lindsey Graham.
In its reporting, ProPublica claimed that of all the lawmakers Kao approached, Collins was Navatek’s “most important patron” because her office supposedly steered millions in government contracts toward the company. This is despite Navatek’s work not being useful to the government, as its research never resulted in products the military wanted to buy.
The FBI had launched an investigation into alleged illegal payments into Collins’ re-election campaign in 2021, Axios reported at the time. The wider shuttered probe, which may involve other lawmakers, has not been disclosed.
Annie Clark, Collins’ deputy chief of staff, told ProPublica that the senator’s office “vigorously” denies allegations made by Kao, calling his claims “outlandish.”
Clark added that Collins’ campaign “fully cooperated” with the FBI investigation into Kao.
“The fact that the FBI and Biden-led Department of Justice thoroughly examined the Navatek matter demonstrates this,” Clark wrote. “These issues were resolved in 2021 and concluded when the Collins campaign disgorged the illegal contributions that Martin Kao had made without our knowledge.”
FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said the agency had investigated claims against Collins years ago “and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign. Any suggestion otherwise is totally false.”
Williamson said the Trump administration has removed agents only “if they have been found to have acted unethically, undermined the mission, or engaged in weaponization of law enforcement.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the FBI and Susan Collins’ office for comment.
Reed told ProPublica: “I understand Martin Kao is now sitting in federal prison. I never had any communications with Senator Collins [or] her staff about Martin Kao and/or Navatek.”
