Maine Democrats criticize Susan Collins over reported allegations of pay-to-play scheme
By Michael Williams, Katherine Koretski, Arlette Saenz, CNN
(CNN) — Maine Democrats are demanding that Republican Sen. Susan Collins answer for a report that her office committed to steering millions of dollars in federal contracts to a Hawaii-based defense contractor in exchange for donations to her 2020 campaign.
“This is an incredibly serious allegation that we need Susan Collins to respond to and address immediately,” Devon Murphy-Anderson, the executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, said. “We’re not up here calling for Susan Collins to resign. We’re not up here putting blame on her. We are asking her for answers,” she added.
ProPublica reported on Tuesday that several executives of the contractor, Navatek, met with a top fundraiser for Collins in 2019 as she was facing a tough reelection contest in which she was behind in fundraising. The meeting took place about a year after Collins helped steer a multimillion-dollar naval research contract to the company, ProPublica reported.
ProPublica reported that the fundraiser asked the executives for a campaign donation, and the company’s CEO, Martin Kao, agreed to cut a check in exchange for tens of millions of additional dollars in government contracts, despite prohibitions on government contractors making political contributions.
The story could shake up a race that could help decide control of the Senate in November. Collins, a five-term incumbent, is seeking reelection in a state that President Donald Trump lost in 2024 by seven points.
Collins’ deputy chief of staff, Annie Clark, said in a statement that the allegations in ProPublica’s story were “categorically false.”
“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,” Clark said in the statement.
She accused Kao of “making outlandish charges about the Collins office” while facing sentencing in his federal case.
The FBI issued a statement saying that “the allegations made in this article had already been investigated by the FBI years ago and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign. Any suggestion otherwise is totally false.”
Collins’ campaign manager, Steve Abbott, held a press conference Wednesday in which he described ProPublica’s reporting as “outrageous.”
“We hear this every cycle that Susan Collins is corrupt and all,” Abbott said. “I mean, whatever … It’s the same thing over and over and over again.”
ProPublica reported that Kao, using a shell company, sent $150,000 to Collins’ campaign fundraising arm. Kao later told other executives that Collins had committed to giving Navatek $32 million in government contracts. The story included a picture of a check made out to the pro-Collins 1820 PAC from the purported shell company “Society of Young Women Scientist and Engineers, LLC.”
The outlet also reported those alleged actions prompted an FBI investigation that was shuttered shortly after Trump took office in 2021.
Kao and two other Navatek executives in 2022 were indicted on charges of making unlawful campaign contributions to a candidate for Congress. Kao, who was already serving a sentence stemming from a COVID-relief fraud case, pleaded guilty in the illegal campaign donations case last year and was sentenced to an additional 33 months in prison.
Collins ended up winning her 2020 contest against Democrat Sara Gideon by more than 8 points.
Democrats held a press conference in Maine Tuesday morning demanding more answers from Collins.
“We deserve to know exactly what happened,” Murphy-Anderson added. “We deserve to know whether taxpayer dollars were always being directed solely based on the interests of Maine people, or if there was something else at play, and we deserve representation in DC that understands the public office is public trust.”
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