FBI was looking at key Republican senator in bribery probe — then Trump took office

The former CEO of a defense contractor told the FBI that he attempted to bribe Maine Sen. Susan Collins using shell companies and straw donors to hide nearly $200,000 in gifts, an article from ProPublica revealed on Tuesday.

Martin Kao told the agency that the donation was part of a nearly $1m effort to influence lawmakers of both parties in states around the country, which ProPublica first reported was backed up with receipts of his donations in FEC filings. The money to Collins’s campaign, Kao claimed to investigators, came directly in response to a request from Collins super PAC director Scott Reed, and resulted in Kao telling his company’s associates in emails that the senator had committed to steering $32m worth of government contracts their way.

The former Navatek CEO pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in 2022 and was sentenced to 87 months in prison in early 2025, just one month after Donald Trump returned to office and began a purge of the FBI officials and agents who took part in the investigations into his attempts to overturn the election and January 6.

Several figures involved with obtaining Kao’s testimony were let go, according to ProPublica, and the agency’s public corruption unit was effectively frozen. The illegal campaign donations to Collins were originally reported in 2021, and at the time both the Collins re-election campaign (which received the money in the 2020 cycle) and the Collins PAC returned the money.

But Collins’s Senate team, locked in one of the most important Senate races of the 2026 cycle, is furiously denying the report and Kao’s newly reported allegations of a pay-to-play scheme. The senator’s D.C. office did not immediately return a request for clarification from The Independent regarding when they were notified the case had been dropped. In total, Kao donated to nearly two dozen politicians in the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, including Collins before his guilty plea in 2022.

“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,” wrote Collins’ deputy chief of staff, Annie Clark.

“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,” Collins’ deputy chief of staff wrote.

The senator’s office did not address why, as ProPublica’s report revealed, her office steered millions of dollars’ worth of government contracts to Navatek, or why a deputy to Reed at his super PAC emailed Kao and sought his phone number, so that Collins could call him and thank him for his support. Reed, in a statement to ProPublica, denied ever discussing Kao’s donation with Collins or her staff. He did not explain why he responded that it was “very smart” for him to make a donation to the PAC through a shell company. As a recipient of federal government contracts, any political donation from Navatek — either through a shell company or direct — is illegal.

According to Kao’s testimony, the company pitched individual lawmakers in private sessions on military research projects, often allegedly prompting Appropriations staffers to put language into bills making Navatek the logical (or only) choice for hyper-specific projects worth millions of dollars. At those meetings, Kao and former Navatek staffers all testified that lawmakers in the House and Senate would directly solicit donations that were understood to be bribes by all parties involved. No lawmakers were mentioned by name, specifically.

Then, completing the chain, Kao told investigators that committee staff and aides to lawmakers would lean on defense officials to see the contracts awarded to Navatek directly.

The FBI did not end up helping Kao secure any time off for his cooperation, and the former CEO was imprisoned last year. His company now operates as “PacMar Technologies”, under its previous ownership. An FBI spokesperson denied that the investigation ever turned up evidence implicating Collins’ staff (or staffers to any other lawmakers) or her allied PAC director, Scott Reed, in illegal activity. No one besides Kao and his associates at Navatek was ever charged.

Kao also told the FBI that while his company was taking more than $40 million a year in government contracts, the research it conducted did not result in any products the government eventually purchased.

Collins is dueling Troy Jackson in one of the most crucial seats for Democrats to pick up this cycle on their quest to obtain a majority in the Senate. Jackson, who replaced Graham Platner in August, called the detailed arrangement “corruption of the highest order” in a statement posted to X on Tuesday.

“Susan Collins delivered millions in taxpayer dollars for a corrupt donor bankrolling her campaign, and then Donald Trump helped her cover it up,” wrote Jackson.

Collins’s campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.