New Revelations: “Susan Collins’s Committee Bought Trucks the Army Didn’t Want. Then Campaign Donations Poured In.”

This week new revelations surfaced about Susan Collins taking money from a defense contractor that received federal funding from the Appropriations Committee even after the Army declared that it did not need any more of the vehicle the company produced. According to the report, the donations from the defense contractor – totaling almost $60,000 after the Army announcement – demonstrate “how Collins’s campaign account has grown with help from employees at defense contractors doing business with the government.” Collins is separately facing scrutiny over a report from ProPublica that the FBI investigated an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving a major donor, an ex-defense contractor.

The U.S. Army announced last year that it had enough of a specific model of armored vehicle and that any more deliveries would be “excess.” But even so, Congress found a way to keep funding alive for the vehicle — and executives at the company that produces the vehicle found a way to flood key members of Congress with campaign donations.

In the weeks after this year’s appropriations bill passed, employees of AM General or its parent company donated tens of thousands to key appropriations committee members in both chambers, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif. Before the Army put the future of the vehicle in jeopardy, Collins was not a frequent beneficiary of contributions from the company’s workers. She last received campaign funds from AM General or its parent company’s employees more than a decade ago. But after the Army’s “excess” announcement last year, employees and the company’s PAC donated over $58,000 to committees associated with Collins.

AM General is most famous for producing the Humvee, the iconic military vehicle that trawled the streets of Baghdad during the Iraq War. In 2023, the Army selected the company to produce 20,000 units of a more heavily armored successor known as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. The company was ramping up its production line in Indiana when then-Army Secretary Dan Driscoll announced in May 2025 that he would cancel its order, saying the additional deliveries would result in an “excess.” Driscoll’s announcement was part of a larger effort to “eliminate waste and obsolete programs.” He said, “Yesterday’s weapons will not win tomorrow’s wars.”

However the military does not always have the last say on its contracts. Congress has for decades swooped in to save pricey programs with political appeal. Soon after the Army moved to kill the vehicle contract, Congress mobilized to save it.  By the time the final version of the defense spending bill passed in February, the Army had been provided with $345 million for procurement of a vehicle it said it did not need.

Collins’s campaign committees had received some money after the Army announced that it wanted to cancel the project. In the weeks after Congress passed the appropriations bill on February 3, Collins and one of her counterparts in the House, Rep. Ken Calvert, both received a burst of donations from AM General employees and the company’s political action committee.

After the appropriations bill went through, donors associated with AM General gave a total of $50,000 to Collins’s fundraising committees. The donors included Chadbourne, the company’s CEO, and two of KPS Capital’s managing partners. (Private equity firm KPS Capital Partners acquired AM General in 2020.) All gave money to a committee raising money on Collins’s behalf at the end of February or start of March.

Government contractors have been banned from donating directly to candidates for decades. In practice, however, that ban does nothing to prevent company PACs or individual employees from giving to campaigns — even if they serve as company executives.