Bombshell ProPublica Investigation Exposes Susan Collins Pay-to-Play Scandal
An explosive new investigation by the news organization ProPublica titled “The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way” has found that Senator Susan Collins is at the center of a massive bribery scandal involving a crooked defense contractor, who is currently serving an 87-month concurrent sentence in federal prison for COVID-relief wire fraud, money laundering, and bank fraud.
ProPublica found that in 2024, the FBI sought to launch a sweeping pay-to-play investigation examining interactions between Sen. Susan Collins and a top donor, according to records and emails reporters reviewed. The donor, ex-defense contractor CEO Martin Kao of the Hawaii-based company Navatek, told agents that his company won millions in federal contracts by bankrolling campaigns of Collins and other powerful politicians.
However, after Donald Trump returned to office, he purged the FBI of the very agents investigating the case, effectively shutting down the investigation into Susan Collins’ role in the bribery scandal. This suggests that President Trump is responsible for making Collins’ legal troubles go away and could hold the investigation over her head if he wanted to use it as leverage to get her vote on key issues. This puts her independence as the head of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee in serious jeopardy. Collins has voted with Trump 96 percent of the time during his second administration.
According to ProPublica, Collins wouldn’t meet with Kao unless he agreed to donate to her campaign. After paying for the privilege of meeting with her, Kao sat down with Maine’s senior Senator in her office and tried to sell her on an $8 million boat hull research project for Navatek and the University of Maine. Collins reportedly seemed supportive. Kao said his lobbyist called him shortly after to tell him that Collins wanted him to bundle tens of thousands of dollars for her reelection, suggesting Navatek throw a fundraiser.
ProPublica reviewed emails showing her staff made it clear to the Navy that it shouldsend the money to Navatek. FBI agents also had evidence of Kao and his lobbyist planning a fundraiser starting in April 2019. Emails with Collins’ scheduler and her campaign’s finance director Amy Abbot “freely mixed talk of Navatek’s Collins-backed contract with plans to raise money for her.” Kao raised over $40,000 in donations from extended family. He told the Collins team to reallocate his excess contributions to his father and sent them his father’s full name and address. An FBI agent highlighted the transaction and noted that it is against election law in a presentation to prosecutors.
“This is perfect,” Amy Abbott, Collins’ campaign finance director, emailed Kao after discussing his father’s contribution. “We are so grateful for ALL the Kao support!”
Then in late 2019, Scott Reed, the head of the Collins super PAC 1820 PAC, asked Navatek executives for a $500,000 donation to support Susan Collins’ reelection during a meeting at the Corner Bakery in Washington D.C. in late 2019. A year earlier, the investigation found, Collins had helped Navatek land a multimillion-dollar Navy research contract in Maine. It is illegal for government contractors to make political contributions and it’s considered criminal bribery for Collins to accept campaign donations in exchange for official actions, such as landing lucrative contracts for a donor.
Kao reportedly told Reed that Navatek wanted Collins to guarantee millions of dollars in additional federal funding for projects in Maine. Kao attempted to skirt campaign finance laws and concealed the source of the money by funneling the donation through a shell company. Reed reportedly assured Kao that Collins would know where the money came from and that Navatek would get its government contracts. Kao sent an initial $150,000 to Reed’s Collins super PAC using a shell company he set up called the “Society for Young Women Scientist” [sic]. Emails retrieved by ProPublica showed that Reed knew Kao was behind the $150,000 anonymous donation because in one email Kao told Reed he planned to donate through a shell company.
“Very smart,” Reed replied, knowing full well that this is against the law.
A check sent from Martin Kao's shell company to the pro-Collins super PAC 1820 PAC
Two months later, Reed told Navatek executives that Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts, according to an internal company email reviewed by ProPublica. Collins’ office reportedly pushed the Navy to award specific contracts to Navtek, according to emails ProPublica reviewed, even though these awards are supposed to be competitive.
“I spoke with Sen. Collins office regarding the $8M,” a naval official wrote in an email on Feb. 6, 2019. “The interested company is Navatek.”
In a meeting with Collins' two campaign officials, Kao said the officials told him the Maine senator expected his ongoing support. Collins told him: “You’ve seen me deliver,” according to Kao.
Reed denied to ProPublica he had any communications with Collins or her staff about Martin Kao or Navatek. But ProPublica found an email that suggests that someone must have relayed the news of Kao’s donation to Collins, just like Reed promised to do at their meeting at the Corner Bakery in late 2019. According to ProPublica, seven days after the super PAC cashed the check from Kao’s shell company, one of Reed’s subordinates emailed a Navatek lobbyist asking for Kao’s phone number: “Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him.”
In a press conference on Wednesday, Collins’ campaign manager and longtime chief of staff Steve Abbott said he had “no record” of calling Kao, but added that it wouldn’t be unusual to make such a call: “We routinely thank people for contributions. … We try to thank everybody.”
From the ProPublica investigation.
Kao’s lawyer Cleta Mitchell suggested that Kao use his shell company, the “Society for Young Women Scientist” [sic], to make charitable donations to make it seem like a legitimate nonprofit. He decided to make the donations to women pursuing careers in science and engineering at state universities seeking to win contracts so it would benefit them politically. Kao admitted that the scholarships were a diversion, writing in an email, “Whatever… just a pack of bitches getting free $.”
In August 2019, Collins announced that Navatek had received an $8 million Pentagon contract for advanced hull-planing research. Using the University of Maine’s 3D printer, Navatek made a prototype and unveiled it at a press conference where a Guinness World Records representative declared it the world’s largest 3D-printed boat. But Navatek executives knew the Navy had no plans to use the new design, former employees told ProPublica
“[The work] got rolled into a few PowerPoint slides and a white paper, and that was the deliverable,” one who worked on the project told ProPublica. “The boats weren’t delivered to the Navy — the Navy didn’t even want them.”
PHOTO: Collins christens a Navatek-designed boat at a University of Maine engineering lab in October 2019. U.S. SEN. SUSAN COLLINS VIA FACEBOOK
The investigation into Collins ran until late 2024, but then Trump was elected and he purged the Justice Department and FBI of anyone who had ever investigated him for various crimes, including the agents investigating the Collins pay-to-play scheme. Speaking to reporters on the Senate floor last Wednesday, Collins denied any wrongdoing.
“In 2021, the Biden Justice Department found there was no wrongdoing by anyone on my campaign staff, my office or me,” she said, according to Punch Bowl News. “This is absolutely outrageous. It’s clearly a political hit job.” She added, “The Biden-led Justice Department and FBI totally cleared my office, my campaign and me five years ago of these seven-year-old allegations.”
Collins said that the investigation into the corruption scandal ended in 2021, but it didn’t. The ProPublica investigation is based on statements Kao made between 2022 and 2024.
The FBI interviewed Kao in September, 2024 and was still examining Kao’s relationship with Collins, her staffers and her super PAC in early 2025. Then Trump dismantled the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section and killed the investigation. The judge in Kao’s sentencing did not give him any leniency for cooperating with federal authorities.
Collins called Kao a “liar,” noting that he “has been twice convicted in separate federal court cases. He’s been convicted of money laundering. He’s been convicted of bank robbery. He’s been convicted of false submissions to the SEC. He’s been convicted of a lot of crimes.” Punch Bowl noted that Kao was convicted of bank fraud, not robbery. Collins’ Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Clark claimed on X, “The FBI and the Court obviously did not believe Kao.”
“ProPublica took the word of someone who pled guilty to five counts of money laundering, three counts of wire fraud, one count of bank fraud, and making false submissions to the FEC,” wrote Clark.
But the ProPublica investigation wasn’t just relying on Kao’s word. It cited several emails and other documents that corroborate his statements to the FBI, interviews and well as thousands of pages of legal records. Reed is a longtime Collins associate. Currently, Reed runs Pine Tree Results, a largely private equity and Palantir-funded super PAC, which has spent $20 million so far to support Collins and oppose Troy Jackson and has booked another $28 million in ads, according to AdImpact. As the Bangor Daily News reports, the Collins’ campaign and Reed’s group raise money together through a joint committee. The Bangor Daily News noted that Pine Tree Results PAC relies on many of the same billionaires who funded 1820 PAC, including Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who donated $3 million. About 21 donors have given to both super PACs, according to the BDN. The Lexington Fund — which is linked to Republican megadonor Leonard Leo, a part-time Maine resident who funds the conservative Maine Wire — gave $1.25 million to Reed’s PAC.
Reed’s lobbying firm, Chesapeake Enterprises, paid the senator’s corporate lobbyist husband, Tom Daffron, as a consultant last year. Last week, Collins called Reed a “person of great integrity.” Collins chief of staff and campaign manager Steve Abbott told reporters that Daffron “worked off and on with Scott Reed for 30-something years, maybe 40-something years.”
“They’re friends, and they’re still working together,” he said.
In a statement, U.S. Senate candidate Troy Jackson called the story “corruption of the highest order.”
"Susan Collins delivered millions in taxpayer dollars for a corrupt donor bankrolling her campaign, and then Donald Trump helped her cover it up. No wonder she voted with him 96% of the time and has rubber-stamped his agenda to hurt Maine."
He added that Mainers “deserve answers about every contract and every conversation that Collins and her team facilitated on the backs of taxpayers.”