WASHINGTON — The Susan Collins FBI investigation reported by ProPublica describes a public-corruption case that agents sought to build in 2024 around an alleged exchange of political money for federal defense spending. The inquiry focused on claims by imprisoned former Navatek chief executive Martin Kao that a large donation benefiting the Maine Republican was connected to promises of tens of millions of dollars for his Hawaii-based defense contractor. The case produced no charge against Collins or her campaign. It was closed after Donald Trump returned to office, and the senator’s office says the account is “categorically false.”
That combination—specific documentary evidence, an informant with a powerful motive to bargain, an investigation that ended without a public test of the central allegation, and a Senate election roughly six weeks away—makes the story politically explosive and evidentially difficult. The right question is not whether one side has already won the argument. It is what is documented, what depends on Kao’s credibility, why the inquiry stopped and what voters can reasonably conclude from an unfinished case.
The alleged scheme: an ask, a conduit and an appropriation
ProPublica reports that the chain began before the alleged deal. In 2018, Collins inserted $8 million in the defense budget for a Navatek research project with the University of Maine, and her office told the Navy the money should go to Navatek. That spending decision is a fact in the reported chronology. By itself, it does not establish that later donations purchased official action.
The contested part begins in late 2019. Scott Reed, then head of the pro-Collins super PAC and now running Pine Tree Results, met Navatek executives at a Corner Bakery near the Capitol and asked for $500,000. Kao later told the FBI that a deal was struck: Navatek would make a large donation benefiting Collins, Collins would know the money came from him, and the company would receive tens of millions more in federal funding. According to Kao’s account, Reed assured him Collins would know.
Because government contractors could not simply write the political check Kao wanted to write, $150,000 went through a shell company called the “Society of Young Women Scientists and Engineers” to 1820 PAC, the pro-Collins super PAC. Kao emailed Reed about that plan. Reed replied, “Very smart,” according to a message ProPublica reporters said they saw. The message corroborates communication about the conduit; what it meant about any promised official act remains the disputed heart of the matter.
Two months later, Kao met with Collins’s office and emailed his executives: “Excellent meeting. Total of $32M will be supported.” The Senate set aside at least $10 million for Navatek projects that year. Kao also told the FBI that Collins said in a private meeting, “You’ve seen me deliver.” Those statements are attributed to Kao. They have not been adjudicated, and Collins’s office rejects the claim that her campaign committed wrongdoing.
The informant: detailed access, serious baggage
Kao is not a neutral witness. He was arrested in 2020 for allegedly bilking $12.8 million from COVID-19 relief programs. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy, illegal campaign contributions and lying to investigators. He is a convicted felon who sought a shorter sentence when he began giving federal agents a broader account of political giving. That motive must weigh heavily against any unsupported part of his story.
But motive does not automatically make every detail false. Over three days at the U.S. attorney’s office in Honolulu, Kao gave agents a 50-page document naming dozens of lobbyists, congressional staffers and members of Congress. He and his associates had donated nearly $900,000 to dozens of politicians, while Navatek built operations in half a dozen states on more than $40 million a year in government funding. He therefore had both incentive to cooperate and direct knowledge of the company’s political-financial network.
The credibility problem cuts both ways. The New York Times confirmed that the investigation was closed and reported that FBI leadership did not believe Kao’s story and that agents lacked corroborating evidence at the time. ProPublica says it independently corroborated much of his account, including reviewing the “Very smart” email. Neither fact erases the other. A responsible assessment separates documents and money trails from recollections of private promises, especially the alleged “You’ve seen me deliver” remark.
How the case died
According to ProPublica, agents in 2024 sought to launch a sweeping pay-to-play investigation into Collins, Navatek and the wider network described by Kao. The proposed case was not simply a revisit of the illegal-contribution prosecution. It was aimed at the more consequential question: whether campaign support was traded for federal action.
The probe died in 2025 after Trump returned to office. The FBI agent who took Kao’s confession was ousted after having worked on the investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. ProPublica reports that the Collins inquiry fell by the wayside amid the Justice Department and FBI overhaul and an exodus of public-corruption officials.
That sequence does not prove the investigation would have produced charges. An unfinished investigation can end because evidence is insufficient, because priorities change, because personnel disappear, or because several pressures converge. The Times account supplies an important restraint: leadership reportedly doubted Kao and agents lacked corroboration at that point. ProPublica’s account supplies the institutional concern: the people positioned to test the claims were removed before the broader case reached a public conclusion.
The denials
Collins’s deputy chief of staff, Annie Clark, answered the report on X on September 22 with an unequivocal denial. “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,” she wrote, calling the ProPublica allegations “categorically false.”
Clark said, “The Collins campaign cooperated fully with the FBI throughout the investigation, producing all of the documents it requested.” She added: “These issues were resolved in 2021, and the FBI has not contacted us about Martin Kao since then.” Her statement portrayed Kao as a guilty man “making outlandish charges about the Collins office, deflecting blame from himself.”
The White House referred questions to the FBI. The FBI said an earlier investigation found nothing implicating Collins or her campaign. That response speaks directly to the earlier review. The unresolved dispute is whether the broader 2024 bribery inquiry described by ProPublica had gathered enough to proceed and why it did not.
Why this matters
Six weeks before the midterms
Collins is seeking a sixth term in battleground Maine against Democrat Troy Jackson, who called the allegations “corruption of the highest order.” Maine Democrats scheduled a Portland news conference for Wednesday morning, September 23. The timing ensures that an investigative story with no courtroom resolution will be tried in campaign advertising, debates and news conferences before any institution produces a new finding.
When a probe disappears with its investigators
Public trust depends not only on verdicts but on credible process. When investigators leave or are removed and an inquiry closes, the public is left unable to distinguish an evidentiary dead end from an institutional interruption. That gap benefits partisans on both sides: critics can call the closure a cover-up, while defenders can call the absence of charges exoneration. Neither claim is established by closure alone.
The power of the Appropriations chair
Collins chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee. The role makes her able to shape federal spending priorities and makes allegations linking donations to contracting especially consequential. It also means ordinary constituent advocacy, university research support and defense spending can be recast as corruption without proof. Scrutiny should therefore be intense and precise: influence is real, but influence is not itself evidence of a bargain.
The informant-credibility problem
Kao’s criminal record and sentencing motive are not side notes; they are central. Cooperating defendants often possess information unavailable elsewhere, yet they also have reasons to enlarge their value to prosecutors. The only sound method is corroboration claim by claim. ProPublica says it did that for much of the account. FBI leadership’s reported skepticism shows why corroboration still matters.
Context: why the 2020 case did not settle the larger question
Kao’s 2020 arrest and 2022 plea established criminal conduct by Kao, including illegal campaign contributions and lying to investigators. They did not adjudicate whether Collins or anyone around her knowingly participated in a pay-to-play arrangement. The earlier case asked who supplied and concealed political money. The later proposed inquiry asked whether official action was promised in exchange. Those are related but distinct questions.
The Navatek chronology illustrates why contractor-donation scandals are difficult to assess from sequence alone. A contractor sought appropriations, political money moved, meetings occurred and federal support followed. Sequence can justify investigation. It cannot, without stronger evidence, prove an agreement. The strongest reported evidence is the contemporaneous correspondence; the weakest is any private remark supported only by a cooperator’s memory.
The Maine race magnifies every ambiguity. Collins’s seniority and committee chairmanship are arguments for experience and leverage on behalf of the state. Jackson’s attack turns the same power into a liability by asking whether access and public spending were improperly connected. Reed’s Pine Tree Results has reserved $28 million in advertising, ensuring the campaign has the resources to answer—and potentially overwhelm—the allegation.
Who wins, who loses and what critics say
Jackson and Maine Democrats gain an argument that joins campaign finance, federal contracting and institutional accountability in one narrative. Collins’s opponents do not need a criminal charge to make that political case. But they risk overstating the evidence if they present Kao’s account as a verdict rather than an allegation.
Collins benefits from the FBI’s statement that an earlier investigation found nothing implicating her or her campaign and from the documented weaknesses of the central witness. She is hurt by the specificity of the emails, dates and dollar amounts—and by the fact that the wider inquiry ended without a transparent evidentiary conclusion.
Navatek’s former leadership loses from renewed scrutiny of how the contractor funded politics while relying on government business. Public-corruption investigators lose if personnel upheaval leaves substantial leads untested. Maine voters lose most if the campaign converts a complicated record into two slogans: “corruption” on one side and “complete exoneration” on the other.
What the numbers mean
$150,000 is the amount that went through the shell company to 1820 PAC. It is the concrete transaction at the center of the alleged conduit. $500,000 is what Reed asked Navatek executives to raise at the Corner Bakery meeting, according to the reported chronology. The difference matters: the ask and the amount ultimately routed should not be collapsed into one figure.
$8 million was inserted in the 2018 defense budget for the Navatek–University of Maine project. $32 million was the total Kao told executives would be supported after his meeting with Collins’s office. At least $10 million was actually set aside by the Senate for Navatek projects that year. Each number describes a different stage—earlier appropriation, claimed promise and recorded legislative support.
Nearly $900,000 represents political donations by Kao and associates to dozens of politicians, showing the scale of the wider political strategy. More than $40 million a year was Navatek’s government-funding base as it expanded into half a dozen states, showing why access to federal spending mattered to the company. $28 million is the advertising reservation by Reed’s Pine Tree Results in the current race, a measure not of the alleged scheme but of the political machinery Collins has available to respond.
The ratios are dramatic, but they are not proof. A $150,000 contribution alongside multimillion-dollar appropriations can look like leverage; the legal and factual question remains whether there was an agreement connecting them. The numbers establish scale and timing. Intent requires evidence.
What happens next
The immediate event is the Maine Democrats’ Wednesday morning news conference in Portland. Jackson will likely use the report to challenge Collins’s judgment and her account of the earlier inquiry. Collins will continue to emphasize Kao’s convictions, the campaign’s cooperation and the FBI’s statement that its earlier work found no implication of wrongdoing.
Reopening the federal case would require officials to revisit evidence that leadership previously judged insufficient, while confronting the personnel losses ProPublica documented. No reopening has been announced. Congressional or Senate ethics scrutiny is a separate possibility, but no such proceeding is established by the available facts. Any ethics review would have to distinguish campaign activity, independent super-PAC conduct and official appropriations work rather than treat them as interchangeable.
For the election, three paths are plausible. The allegation could harden existing partisan views and change little; it could move voters who value Collins’s institutional reputation; or it could be blunted by doubts about Kao and the absence of charges. The $28 million advertising plan means neither side will lack amplification.
The stakes are larger than one race. A public-corruption system must be able to investigate powerful appropriators without treating every earmark as a crime, and it must be able to use compromised informants without accepting their accounts on faith. The allegations against Collins are unadjudicated. The closure is not a verdict. Maine voters are being asked to judge the conduct and the credibility of every participant before the justice system has supplied a final answer.