Collins Rejects Pay-to-Play Allegations as Democrats Press for Answers
publishers 4articles 5first reported 23 Sep, 20:51 UTCdeveloping since 24 Sep · 3 editions
Sen. Susan Collins rejected allegations that she was connected to a pay-to-play arrangement involving a defense contractor, calling the report a “partisan hit job” and a “smear job,” while Democrats in Maine demanded answers and Senate Republicans defended her.
ProPublica reported that the FBI sought to investigate Collins’s interactions with Martin Kao, the former chief executive of government contractor Navatek. According to the report, Kao used a shell company to contribute $150,000 to a super PAC supporting Collins before telling other executives he had been informed that Collins would help Navatek obtain $32 million in federal contracts. The FBI was moving toward a broader bribery investigation in late 2024, ProPublica reported, but the effort ended after the Trump administration removed personnel handling public-corruption cases.
Collins and her staff called the allegations categorically false and said the Justice Department had cleared the senator and her staff of wrongdoing. Collins questioned the credibility of Kao, who is serving a federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to fraud-related charges.
Maine Democratic Senate nominee Troy Jackson called the allegations “corruption of the highest order” and sought details about contracts and communications involving Collins’s office. State Democratic Party officials also accused Collins of misconduct.
Republican senators rallied behind Collins. Sen. John Cornyn called the allegations “a bunch of BS,” Sen. Katie Britt praised Collins’s ethical standards, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he did not believe Collins or her campaign had been implicated.
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Written from 5 articles, 2 with the publisher's own text; 4 independent newsrooms once syndicated copies count as one; this version written within the hour the record first saw the story; the editor kept it as written.
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