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In 2024, the FBI was investigating contributions made to the campaign of Sen. Susan Collins and other members of Congress. There were allegations that financial contributions were made to congressional campaigns by a defense contractor in exchange for assurances that the company would get government contracts, Pro Publica reported this week.
After Donald Trump was elected president the investigation ceased amid Trump’s shrinking and shuttering of federal agencies and purges of employees who had investigated him in the past. Teams at the FBI and Department of Justice that were investigating public corruption claims, some of them involving Trump, were gutted. One of the FBI agents who was looking into the pay-to-play claims was involved in investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Pro Public reported.
The independent newsroom reported on the aborted FBI investigation this week. They revealed detailed allegations and a trove of FBI documents about claims that Navatek, a Hawaii-based defense contractor, engaged in a pay-to-play scheme with the campaigns of several elected officials, including Collins.
A spokesperson for Collins vehemently denied the claims shared by Pro Publica, calling them “outlandish,” adding that the senator’s office fully cooperated with the FBI.
“Sen. Collins routinely meets with companies that do business in Maine, and she regularly supports Maine companies that have good products,” Collins Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Clark said. “She does not ‘steer’ contracts to entities, she advocates for them on their merits.”
Because the FBI was reportedly not allowed to complete this investigation, political operatives have taken over the narrative, with speculation and political attacks replacing factual information from government investigators.
Troy Jackson, who is challenging Collins as she seeks reelection to a sixth term, and other Democrats have jumped on the allegations as proof of corruption. They are not.
If the FBI had done a fuller investigation, it could have cleared Collins, her office and her campaign of any wrongdoing, as it did when it first investigated Navatek’s involvement with the senator in 2021. It concluded then that Collins’ office and campaign were not aware of the deceptions by the company’s then-CEO Martin Kao.
Or, it could have determined that more prosecutions were in order, as it did in the 2021 investigation, which resulted in Kao being indicted for making illegal campaign contributions. He later pleaded guilty.
Now Kao, who has an incentive to implicate others in his scheme in hopes of serving less time in prison, is the main source of information in the more recent FBI investigation. Kao told the FBI he orchestrated deals for multimillion-dollar defense contracts through several lobbyists and members of Congress, including Collins, after he and his family made campaign contributions, ProPublica reported.
There is certainly reason for concern about the most recent allegations. However, Kao’s credibility, and how quickly the allegations have been turned into political fodder, raise many red flags.
This highlights why the FBI should have been allowed to finish its work.
It also shows the dangers of the president’s push to purge agencies of people he considers disloyal or who had previously investigated his actions.
The president is often doing this to protect himself and his close associates. Instead, as this case shows, such actions have hurt others in unexpected ways.
Government agencies should be allowed to do their work — to find wrongdoing, and to clear those accused of wrongdoing when that is warranted.
