The office of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) dismissed a Tuesday report suggesting the longtime senator was under FBI scrutiny as it looked into pay-to-play allegations in the final months of the Biden administration.
“There have never been any allegations of wrongdoing by the Collins for Senator campaign, and the campaign was never the target of the FBI investigation,” Collins Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Clark said in a lengthy statement, calling the allegations “categorically false.”
The statement is a direct response to a ProPublica article describing preliminary steps the FBI took in 2024 to investigate campaign contributions that informant Martin Kao, the CEO of defense contractor Navatek, claimed were steered to politicians, including Collins, in exchange for millions of dollars in federal contracts. The story cited a 2019 meeting between Kao and the head of a pro-Collins super PAC and suggested that the scrutiny evaporated as a result of a Trump-led purge of the Justice Department.
Clark, the Collins deputy, noted that Kao was facing federal charges at the time and has since been convicted of money laundering and bank fraud.
“As Martin Kao was awaiting sentencing, he began making outlandish charges about the Collins office, deflecting blame from himself and placing it on Senator Collins,” Clark said.
“These issues were resolved in 2021, and the FBI has not contacted us about Martin Kao since then,” she added.
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Collins, the Senate Appropriations Committee chairwoman who is seeking a sixth term this November in battleground Maine, was quickly dinged by Democratic rival Troy Jackson. He accused Collins of “corruption of the highest order.”
“No wonder she voted with [Trump] 96% of the time and has rubberstamped his agenda to hurt Maine,” Jackson said in a statement. “Susan Collins doesn’t care that we’re losing our health care, that ICE is killing people on the streets, and that we’ve been dragged into a pointless war — as long as her donors get their contracts and her coffers get filled.”
The story was published as polls show Collins, a centrist Republican, tied or narrowly behind Jackson in one of the most pivotal Senate races of the 2026 cycle. She overcame a challenge in 2018 despite surveys showing her behind.