A new investigation is out today from the news site ProPublica about a former defense contractor’s allegations that he won millions in federal contracts by bankrolling the campaigns of powerful politicians, including U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
That CEO has since been convicted of an array of charges. But the story, the first in a series about a vast pay-to-play scheme, could affect Collins’ bid for a sixth term.
Maine Public's chief political correspondent Steve Mistler spoke with ProPublica reporter Molly Redden about what she discovered during her reporting.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Mistler: Molly, thanks so much for joining us. The top lines of this story seem to boil down to this: Sen. Collins helped steer millions in federal defense contracts to this company, Navatek. Its CEO, Martin Kao, illegally funneled thousands of dollars to a super political action committee that supported her re-election in 2020, and he was later convicted on separate charges, including money laundering and bank fraud. But it appears that in an effort to get that sentence reduced, he began talking to the FBI. What specifically was he alleging?
Redden: He was claiming that the donations he made to Collins, both her campaign and then the ones that he funneled to her super PAC, were part of a quid pro quo deal, part of a prearranged agreement that he would help raise money for her very tough re-election effort in exchange for her help getting federal contracts, both by including them in the annual Pentagon budget — of course, she sits on at the time and now chairs the Appropriations Committee — and then leaning on naval officials after the fact, after the budget became law, to make sure that Navatek was the recipient of those contracts. So he said that there were private meetings between him and her staff and the person, Scott Reed, who ran her super PAC at the time, and there was a sort of no-nonsense, straightforward agreement. It wasn't a wink and a nod. It was a this for that.
And your reporting shows that these allegations pique the interest of the FBI and specifically a special division that investigates corruption. But what happened to that investigation?
That investigation, you know, it was very new. It wasn't even clear where it was going to lead. We know that as part of that investigation, Collins wasn't officially a target, but FBI investigators had a lot of questions about her. But that work was cut off pretty quickly because the unit that investigates public corruption at the FBI was dismantled. It was sort of purged agent by agent by FBI Director Kash Patel and other Donald Trump appointees. Some of them — you know, one of the agents on this, she had worked on an investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, so that was the reason that she got fired, she alleges in a lawsuit. And then meanwhile, the public integrity section at the Justice Department, where there are attorneys that help shape public corruption cases, they sort of work with that FBI unit. They lost their leadership very early in Trump's term after there were orders from Trump's DOJ leadership to drop a corruption investigation into New York City Mayor Eric Adams. A lot of leadership resigned en masse in protest, and then over the coming months, most of the attorneys working there quit or were reassigned — quit in protest, essentially, of the coring out of their mission, including the person who was working on this case.
Did you find any evidence that the Trump administration fired these investigators to stop a prospective probe into this Kao issue, or was it simply aimed at gutting the corruption division overall?
It was aimed at gutting the corruption division overall and the corruption capabilities overall. We didn't find any indication that this was because somebody caught wind that there was an investigation that could touch Collins.
Your story acknowledges that Kao has a credibility problem, right? But your team spent close to a year seeking to corroborate his claims. What did you find that supported them? I'm thinking specifically about a copy of the check written by the front group Kao's team created to funnel a donation to the pro-Collins super PAC in 2019.
Sure. I mean, we found a couple of — we found a lot of really compelling contemporary documents, and we looked at a lot of what the FBI had gathered. You know, the FBI — they don't seek to launch an investigation just on the basis of what Kao said. They also went and looked at a lot of documentary evidence. You know, one thing they did is use public records to check the timelines of some of the things he was saying, and those matched up. You know, the donations occurred roughly when he said they did, and Navatek did get many tens of millions of dollars in contracts as a result of the Senate Appropriations Committee putting money that was specifically intended for Navatek in the Pentagon budget. One thing that we saw that the FBI also looked at is there were emails indicating that staffers from Collins' office reached out to naval officials to let them know that the money they had for specific types of research was intended to go to Navatek, and those are supposed to be competitive contracts. So those are things we saw. You know, we saw some really astonishing emails from inside this company, and as they spoke with their lobbyists. And they're talking as if they are buying the cooperation of politicians. You know, we have that image of the check from Navatek and its shell company to the Susan Collins super PAC, but what we also have — because, you know, that check doesn't come in Kao's name or in Navatek's name, it's being routed through a shell company to try to keep the source of the money hidden from the public. But behind closed doors, Kao and the head of Collins' super PAC are emailing, and he's letting them know, 'Hey, you're going to see this check. It's going to be from a shell company. Here's the name of the shell company. It should come through in the next couple of days, and you'll know it's from me.' So according to Kao's version of that meeting, that was important because what Kao claims is that he was making this donation in agreement with the head of Collins' super PAC in exchange for her knowing that he gave the money and making it so that there was a lot of money in the next year's annual budget meant for Navatek. And of course, just looking from the outside, the money comes in and it's anonymous. There's no way to know who sent it. So it's notable to us that he sent these emails, essentially making sure that the head of her super PAC knows that it came from him, so that Collins would know that it came from him, because according to him, that was the arrangement. That her super PAC will let her know, and then there was an email saying, 'Susan Collins wants to call to thank you.'
As you know, Collins' response to these allegations is throughout your story, and today her deputy chief of staff released another statement. It accuses ProPublica of relying on Kao's 'outlandish statements' and seems to dismiss the story by saying the FBI already investigated the matter and that Collins' campaign fully cooperated. It goes on to say that the issues were resolved in 2021.
Sure, I mean, none of that is really true. We did not simply take the word of Kao. We conducted our own investigation of his claims. You know, we've got the receipts. We put together timelines. We published emails that we looked at that undergird a lot of our reporting. You know, we really stress tested his claims, and also the FBI stress tested his claims, and that's part of what we're reporting here. But not only that, you know, I think they're hiding the ball here a little bit. They claim that all of this was resolved, but we reported, and we show our evidence, that anti-corruption agents at the FBI were asking about Collins, probing her activities and her campaign staff's activities as recently as late 2024. This was a new investigation that might have implicated her and and her staff. This was not something that was tied up in a bow several years ago. This was something that was happening. It was a live issue right up until Trump's DOJ leadership totally dismantled the FBI and DOJ teams that were handling this public corruption probe.
You know, the other aspect of this story that I really don't want to get buried is how these Navatek contracts, which are obviously taxpayer money, they never produce the products that the U.S. military would use. I'm thinking specifically of a 3D printed boat made by the University of Maine engineering lab and designed by Navatek in 2019. Collins and other members of the Maine congressional delegation christened this vessel during a big ceremony at the university. But that boat isn't in service, is it?
No, the Navy did not acquire that design. The Navy didn't have intentions of putting that into production. You know, the engineers sometimes, like, felt they were working on really interesting engineering questions, but they were just sort of producing research that didn't really go anywhere. Under Kao, when he ran the company, that didn't go anywhere. That never turned into actual products that the Navy, which is the main branch of the military that they were working with at the time, that they wanted to buy, and everybody involved kind of knew that it wasn't going to go further than the prototype stage.
You know, finally, Molly, this story mentions that this is the first in a series. What should we expect to learn from some of your future reporting?
Well, we are hoping to take a look at other members of Congress who had very close relationships with Kao, and you know, taking a look at the ones where we have very strong documentary evidence. And so if any of your listeners remember these meetings, remember this guy's presence on Capitol Hill, we would love to hear from them.
