There’s nothing to say here other than ProPublica laughably got it wrong, and Sen. Susan Collins’ staff (R-ME) quickly turned this hit piece into mincemeat, which seems based on the account of a convicted felon. It was some pay-to-play scheme, where the FBI was circling around Collin, so says ProPublica. Oh, and former FBI Agent Kevin Gounoud, the guy who wanted to criminally investigate Elon Musk for asking federal workers about their workweek productivity was buzzing around this:
Important for everyone to remember that ProPublica is a left-wing pay for play dark money scheme to help the left.
— Matt Whitlock (@MattWhitlock) September 22, 2026
Shame on you guys for this.https://t.co/dIGlXQVbrk
This is an embarrassing nothingburger, even for you.
— Tony Kinnett (@TheTonus) September 22, 2026
This is just a hit job on Collins. Notice they don’t mention any of the other two dozen members of Congress in the headline. https://t.co/R4n0D1TzEu
— Unfiltered Artist (@EmpireEnjoyer3) September 22, 2026
I see ProPublica is up to their game of dirty tricks in September of an election year to help Troy Jackson, the communist who had two kids with his second cousin.
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) September 22, 2026
ProPublica is a Democrat dark money operation that is funded by left-wing radicals.
ProPublica now amplifying lies… https://t.co/Pgv7IqR4aP
1) ProPublica is a left-wing propaganda operation.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 22, 2026
2) The left-wing activist Kevin Gounaud who initiated the Susan Collins investigation is the same guy who famously tried to investigate Elon last year for DOGE work.
3) He was fired last year. https://t.co/Ybt5E2BqUo
In the final weeks of 2019, a top fundraiser for Sen. Susan Collins walked into a perilous meeting at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C.
For the first time in her two-decade Senate career, the Republican lawmaker from Maine was in danger of losing her seat. President Donald Trump’s dismal approval ratings were dragging her down in the polls, and she was falling behind her likely 2020 Democratic challenger in fundraising.
Scott Reed, head of the Collins super PAC, was on a mission to close that gap. Reed was meeting that day with three executives from a Hawaiian defense contractor, Navatek. A year earlier, Collins had helped their company land a multimillion-dollar Navy research contract in Maine. Now, seated at a coffee shop not far from the U.S. Capitol, Reed asked them for a $500,000 donation.
Government contractors are banned from making political contributions. More consequentially, for the company to offer donations to Collins in exchange for an official action, or for Collins to accept, would constitute criminal bribery.
But the company did have such a proposal: Navatek was hungry for more government contracts in Maine. If they cut a big check, the CEO told Reed, Navatek wanted Collins to guarantee tens of millions of dollars in additional federal funding.
To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Navatek planned to funnel the donation through a shell company. The CEO wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from. Reed confirmed that she would, the executive said — and that Navatek would get its government contracts.
After the Corner Bakery meeting, Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins super PAC using the shell company. Two months later, he told Navatek executives that Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts, according to an internal company email reviewed by ProPublica.
Three years later, Kao holed up in a conference room to recount the Corner Bakery meeting to a group of four FBI agents and federal prosecutors. The FBI had seen through his shell company ruse, and in 2022 a grand jury indicted him for making illegal campaign contributions. No one working for Collins was charged.
Facing years in prison, Kao hoped to do less time by revealing the entire scheme.
What he told them has never before become public. The Corner Bakery meeting, he asserted, was just one episode in a sprawling pay-to-play operation that embroiled some of the most powerful figures in Congress.
Over three days at the U.S. attorney’s office in Honolulu, Kao laid out in devastating detail how his operation worked. He gave agents a 50-page document naming dozens of lobbyists, congressional staffers and members of Congress who he said helped him trade cash for contracts. Kao and his close associates had donated nearly $900,000 to dozens of politicians, allowing Navatek to establish operations in half a dozen states with over $40 million a year in government funding.
Yeah, I’ll save you the trouble: Collins was never in real legal danger, no allegations of wrongdoing were ever lobbed, and the FBI never trusted or believed Mr. Kao. Case closed. Another ‘L’ for left-wing ProPublica. Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Clark has more:
The seven-year-old allegations made against Senator Collins and her staff in this piece are categorically false. There have never been any allegations of wrongdoing by the Collins for Senator campaign, and the campaign was never the target of the FBI investigation.
— Annie Clark (@annieclark25) September 22, 2026
ProPublica… https://t.co/h4YZ9Nxdpe
The seven-year-old allegations made against Senator Collins and her staff in this piece are categorically false. There have never been any allegations of wrongdoing by the Collins for Senator campaign, and the campaign was never the target of the FBI investigation.
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. As Martin Kao was awaiting sentencing, he began making outlandish charges about the Collins office, deflecting blame from himself and placing it on Senator Collins, including alleging that our office required contributions before taking meetings and engaged in extortion, pay for play, and bribery. The FBI and the Court obviously did not believe Kao, and in 2025 he was sentenced in two separate cases to prison terms of seven years and three years to be served concurrently, as well as an additional five years of supervised release at the end of his prison term.
It is important to note that during the Biden Administration the FBI and the Department of Justice thoroughly investigated the Navatek matter. The Collins campaign cooperated fully with the FBI throughout the investigation, producing all of the documents it requested and serving as fact witnesses in official settings. In response to the allegations in the ProPublica piece, the FBI clearly stated that a suggestion of wrongdoing by Senator Collins or her staff is “totally false.”
These issues were resolved in 2021, and the FBI has not contacted us about Martin Kao since then.
Case closed. What the hell is even this, guys?
ProPublica wants you to believe a convicted fraudster over the Biden DOJ and FBI, which investigated this years ago and found no wrongdoing by Susan Collins or her staff.
— Sarah Selip (@SarahSelip) September 22, 2026
Even for ProPublica, repackaging debunked allegations as a bombshell is liberal lunacy. https://t.co/nCjszgvByT
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