PRESS RELEASE
1 Month After Bombshell Report Put Collins At Center Of Pay-To-Play Scheme, Mainers Demand Answers
PORTLAND, ME — One month after the bombshell investigation from Propublica revealed that Susan Collins was being examined by the FBI for steering federal contracts to a major donor — until Donald Trump ended the investigation – Mainers are still waiting for honest answers from Collins.
Since the scandal first broke, additional reporting proved Collins’ denials of the scheme were outright lies. Then The Intercept reported that under Collins’ watch, Congress provided $345 million for military vehicles the Army said it did not need — followed by a burst of company-connected contributions to Collins’ fundraising committees. And just last week, new reporting featured in the Portland Press Herald and The Intercept detailed that in the two months following a critical federal watchdog report on F-35 jets, Lockheed Martin employees and executives, including its CEO and COO, gave Maine Senator Susan Collins $59,500, and weeks later she voted to fund 83 more F-35s – despite the jets being behind schedule and well over budget.
Statement from Democratic Nominee for U.S. Senate Troy Jackson
“Mainers deserve answers about what Susan Collins has been doing with all the power she claims to have and why she repeatedly steered taxpayer dollars to her own campaign donors. The fact is that the FBI was circling around Collins. They had the emails, meetings, checks – clear evidence of a pay-to-play scheme involving her office – but Trump came back, and his administration dismantled the investigation. Now Susan Collins votes with Trump 96% of the time and she needs to tell Mainers why. That’s the difference between Susan Collins and I: I owe Trump and the billionaires nothing. I owe the people of Maine everything, and I’ll fight for them every day.”
See key reporting below:
Propublica: The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way
Probe: In 2024, the FBI sought to launch a sweeping pay-to-play investigation examining interactions between Sen. Susan Collins and a top donor, records and emails show.
Confession: The donor, an ex-defense contractor, told agents his company won millions in federal contracts by bankrolling campaigns of powerful politicians.
Shutdown: After Donald Trump returned to office, the investigation died, a casualty of his purge of the FBI. Its closure shut a potential window into how Washington works.
ProPublica: Susan Collins Dismissed Our Reporting as Old News. Some of Her Claims Aren’t True.
After the story published, Collins and her campaign denied any wrongdoing in numerous media appearances. Some of the statements made by Collins and her representatives are not accurate.
An FBI spokesperson told ProPublica the agency had investigated claims against Collins years ago “and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign.” But the investigation at the center of ProPublica’s story was based on claims Kao made between 2022 through 2024 — not seven years ago, as Collins states. That investigation did not conclude under President Joe Biden but under Trump, in 2025, after his administration purged the agents and Department of Justice attorneys assigned to the case.
FBI records reviewed by ProPublica show the agency remained interested in the conduct of Collins and her staff right up until the most recent phase of their investigation was shut down under Trump.
The judge in Kao’s sentencing ultimately offered him no benefit for his cooperation with federal authorities, sentencing him to 87 months in federal prison.
ProPublica did not simply take Kao at his word but reviewed a trove of evidence gathered by the FBI. It also examined thousands of pages of legal records and interviewed dozens of people familiar with Navatek, its Washington operations and the FBI inquiry to independently corroborate much of Kao’s account.
Scott Reed, the longtime Republican strategist at the center of ProPublica’s report alleging U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and other lawmakers may have been involved in a pay-to-play scheme, remains a major force in the five-term incumbent’s inner circle.
Reed now helms Pine Tree Results PAC, which has booked more than $28 million in ads in Collins’ reelection bid against Democrat Troy Jackson, according to AdImpact data. Her campaign and the Reed-led group raise money together through a joint committee.
Reed’s lobbying firm, Chesapeake Enterprises, paid the senator’s husband, Tom Daffron, as a consultant last year.
New York Times: Weeks Before the Election, Collins’s Ties to a Fund-Raiser Are Under Scrutiny
Long before Donald J. Trump upended the Republican Party, Scott Reed was one of its go-to political operatives.
One of his closest relationships was with Senator Susan Collins of Maine, and her husband, Tom Daffron, a former Capitol Hill staffer and lobbyist. Mr. Daffron previously worked at Mr. Reed’s government relations firm, and last year it paid him for consulting, according to the senator’s financial disclosure.
The longstanding ties between Mr. Reed and the senator and her husband are now under intense scrutiny following a report by ProPublica that said the F.B.I. had sought to begin a pay-to-play investigation examining Ms. Collins’s interactions with a donor seeking federal contracts. Mr. Reed, who headed a pro-Collins super PAC, exchanged emails with the donor, Martin Kao, according to ProPublica.
Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Ms. Collins described Mr. Reed as “a person of great integrity.”
The Intercept: Lockheed Martin Showered Susan Collins with Cash as F-35 Program Hit Turbulence
From May 1 to June 30, 2023, employees and top executives from Lockheed Martin donated $59,500 to Collins’s campaign committee.
The donations were outliers during that period: Collins was among the largest recipients of Lockheed cash; the company was her largest single donor over those two months; and it was the largest spending blitz on Collins by Lockheed compared to the same period in other years.
The effort appeared to pay off for Lockheed. In July 2023, less than two months after the release of the Government Accountability Office report, Collins voted in favor of appropriating funds to purchase 83 new F-35 jets. Later that year, when the final version of the military budget was signed into law, Collins celebrated the economic boon she said it would bring to the state of Maine.
The U.S. Army announced last year that it had enough of a specific model of armored vehicle and that any more deliveries would be “excess.” But even so, Congress found a way to keep funding alive for the vehicle — and executives at the company that produces the vehicle found a way to flood key members of Congress with campaign donations.
In the weeks after this year’s appropriations bill passed, employees of AM General or its parent company donated tens of thousands to key appropriations committee members in both chambers, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif.
Before the Army put the future of the vehicle in jeopardy, Collins was not a frequent beneficiary of contributions from the company’s workers. She last received campaign funds from AM General or its parent company’s employees more than a decade ago. But after the Army’s “excess” announcement last year, employees and the company’s PAC donated over $58,000 to committees associated with Collins.
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