Give me a nickel for every time Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.) makes headlines for being an awful human being, and I might be 1/10000000th of the way to illegally funding her sixth run for office. Because, of course, the deeply unpopular MAGA septuagenarian is at the center of another political scandal, and, well… it rockets her straight to the tippy top of the most-corrupt-politicians list.
The bombshell report in question was released on Tuesday morning by ProPublica, which unearthed that Collins was the subject of a massive corruption probe conducted by the FBI in 2024. (Emphasis on “was.” We’ll get to that later.) Per the outlet, she—and other politicians from both ends of the aisles, probably—received thousands of dollars in campaign money from Navatek, a Hawaii-based military contractor, after she steered a windfall of cash and contracts to the company via federal defense contracts. What’s a working democracy without some good ol’ bribery, eh?
As it turns out, Collins—the same lawmaker whose vote secured Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation in 2018, then faked disappointment over SCOTUS’ consequent decision to overturn Dobbs—was way more of a sellout than we thought. Most of this became clear to the FBI when Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, was arrested in 2020 for allegedly bilking $12.8 mil. worth of Covid-19 relief funds, which landed him a federal indictment. When his computer and emails were seized, agents discovered he was running a “pay-to-play operation” with various members of Congress, including Collins. Per ProPublica:
They zeroed in on Kao’s relationship with Collins. In a 60-slide presentation agents prepared for prosecutors, they highlighted contributions that Kao and his wife made to the senator in 2018, right before Collins placed the $8 million in research funding into the federal budget. Kao had also given Navatek money to various relatives to donate to Collins in 2019, sending her around $33,000 through these illegal straw donors, the indictment said. Kao’s wife and father did not reply to requests for comment.
The scheme apparently kicked off in 2019, while Collins was running for her fifth term and in need of funding to compete with her Dem. challenger. She, Scott Reed (who headed her super PAC), and three executives from Navatek met at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C., and Reed asked the contractor for a $500,000 donation. (One year earlier, Collins helped Navatek obtain a multimillion-dollar contract in Maine.) But instead of having Navatek, a government contractor, make a political contribution—which constitutes criminal bribery!—they agreed to have the contractor make a political contribution through a shell company, instead.
Sen. Susan Collins helped steer millions in federal defense contracts to Navatek, whose CEO illegally funneled thousands of dollars to her campaign.
The FBI sought to launch a probe and was eyeing Collins and other lawmakers.
Then Trump gutted the unit in charge. THREAD 🧵
— ProPublica (@propublica.org) September 22, 2026 at 11:45 AM
ProPublica points out that an FBI probe into Kao and Collins was ongoing until at least 2024—when the FBI was ready to launch a new investigation to see how deep the corruption went. Until, that is, a certain buffoon returned to the Oval Office in January 2025 and all but transformed the Justice Department into a Department of Injustice for his own—and gutted the FBI and DOJ, all but botching a bunch of ongoing investigations with one stone.
Because, along with pushing out the majority of the DOJ’s anti-corruption unit lawyers during its first year in office, the administration also broke up CR-15, an elite FBI unit that focused on investigating congressional misconduct. Two of the agents who worked for CR-15, Michelle Ball and Kevin Gounaud, were the ones who believed there was enough on Kao to conduct a broader investigation into whether other lawmakers were also bribed. However, both Ball and Gounaud were fired after being targeted under Trump’s retribution campaign, the former being accused of “weaponizing” the DOJ for investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Alas, we know all we need to about the kinds of people the FBI likes to hire these days. And hint: It’s not people who’ll actually do their job.
