Political media has been abuzz for the last 24 hours about the ProPublica attack on Susan Collins. I'm not linking to it here; you can Google it yourself if you so desire.
There are, however, four key things I want to highlight about the piece. This is what you need to know:
· The only place where the piece gets close to suggesting that Collins was personally implicated in any of this is here: “Seven days after the super PAC cashed the check from Kao’s shell company, one of Reed’s subordinates emailed a Navatek lobbyist asking for Kao’s phone number: ‘Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him.’” It’s not clear that call ever took place; there’s also no indication in the piece that Collins’ campaign was coordinating with the SuperPAC, which would be illegal.
· All of this was originally spotted in *2020,* after which *Democrats* controlled the relevant investigating authorities, and had a full four years to do it. If a case couldn’t be made against Collins/her staff in that period of time, you have to wonder how much “there” was there. (For the record, no, I'm not implying the Biden administration would have engaged in a partisan investigation or prosecution; I'm just saying that if they wanted to, this presumably would have provided a great opening—unless there really was no “there” there at all, in which case, however politicized the administration may or may not have been, they weren’t going to succeed).
· The piece notably ends with these paragraphs: “Before Ball [the investigator] was fired, however, she managed to take a key step forward. Based on all the evidence, she persuaded her supervisors to approve a new investigation. It centered on South Carolina, one of the states Navatek eyed for a rapid expansion. The FBI had questions about a steak dinner Kao shared with Sen. Lindsey Graham.”
· Right above that section, the piece notes this, “By late 2024, Ball and Gounaud, the FBI agents, had come to believe there was enough evidence to warrant a broader investigation into bribery of members of Congress, according to a memo seen by ProPublica. Before they could embark on their new mission, however, they became casualties of Trump’s retribution campaign.” Note the plural—members.
Here’s why this matters.
After the piece ran, Crimson Hub did an FEC contributions search to ascertain who exactly Martin Kao had been backing, financially. The piece focuses on Collins—and to be fair, with her tough re-election, she’s a great hook for it, and the easiest way to grab at eyeballs.
But I noticed something interesting. Set aside the SuperPAC donations; between 2019 and 2026, in terms of actual hard campaign money—i.e., that which is spent directly by the candidate and in the manner they, with the bevy of information they have and a SuperPAC simply could not because they do not live in the mind of the officeholder, went to quite a few people, and not principally Collins.
The piece notes that the probe looked at “bipartisan” Members of Congress.
But it also finishes off by namechecking one in particular, who stands out a little more from FEC filings. That would be Graham. (It’s worth noting that two other South Carolina members in safe seats also stand out).
Not only did Graham pocket $1k more from Kao than Collins did. She also received all her donations, $5,600, in 2019, whereas Graham kept benefiting into 2020. Kao also repeatedly made illegally high contributions to Graham that had to be refunded, as the FEC record reflects.
Notably, he did not do this for Collins.
Maybe that’s because her campaign was more scrupulous about who was attempting to donate, and how much for, or maybe it’s because Graham was a bigger target. Our guess is the latter, because if Collins’ campaign was sloppy enough to be taking contributions from a federal contractor at all (they’re not supposed to donate; that’s part of the alleged scandal here), they probably wouldn’t have been on the ball enough to stop excess contributions up front, and would instead of have refunded them on the back end to achieve compliance.
Also, let’s remember, as a Senator, Graham has never been in a close re-election race (despite Lincoln Project fangirl type touting of his Democratic contender making it a “real race” last time around). By contrast, Collins has been imperiled from the minute she set foot in the Senate.
Otherwise put, there’s no reason Graham needed the money; donations to him look like naked vote-buying (or vote-renting). Donations to Collins look a lot more like trying to reward a Senator who has prioritized Navy-related jobs in her own state that might not exist at all, absent her efforts—and which were, yes, offered by Kao’s company, porky and irritating to anti-earmark fans as all this kind of thing is.
Screenshots via spreadsheet downloaded from FEC.gov
All of this, overlaid against the information about what happened with the investigation once Trump came into office is very interesting.
While Collins is no friend of Trump—and someone he would have little interest in protecting, since she voted to remove him from office following the 2021 Capitol Insurrection/Riot/Bad Other Description You May Prefer, Graham notably was a close Trump confidant and pal—and one who did Trump’s most favorite thing in the world, which is cozy up to him after previously ostracizing him.
Remember Graham’s post-January 6th speech ripping Trump a new one? After that, he voted not to remove Trump from office over January 6th, and took to campaigning for him in 2024, and thereafter riding around on Air Force One.
Collins never did that.
As much as Graham Platner lied about the fact, and Troy Jackson continues to try to mislead Maine voters, Collins voted against Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill. She has also opposed the President on tariffs. Graham, by contrast, was a Yes Man on all of these things, as well as the major cheerleader for the War in Iran, which Trump has been enthusiastic about but others in his orbit (cough, cough, JD Vance) have opposed.
To the extent anyone deserved a “reward,” like killing an investigation, it was Graham. Not Collins.
One problem for whoever probably started pushing this months ago? Graham unexpectedly died over the summer, making him a really bad focus for a hit focused on alleged corruption with regard to donations allegedly linked to Pentagon pork.
Collins by contrast remains, well, interesting. Her race is close. She’s always been viewed as clean as a whistle. No one loves a corruption story more than when it seems linked to someone who doesn’t have a blemished ethical record.
There are other interesting takeaways about the story, and namely what ProPublica did not report—including some significant dirt on Democrats linked to Kao. More on that later, and stay tuned.
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