Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins is vehemently denying a ProPublica report out earlier this week that claims the FBI focused her in a corruption probe, saying “it is clearly a political hit job.”
The ProPublica report stated {that a} Republican advisor requested protection agency Navatek and its former CEO Martin Kao for large donations to her marketing campaign in alternate for tens of millions in federal contracts. In 2024, the FBI sought to launch an investigation into Collins and the donor, however when President Donald Trump returned to workplace for his second time period, the investigation died after he made cuts to the FBI, the report acknowledged.
ABC Information has not independently confirmed the reporting by ProPublica. Kao didn’t communicate with ProPublica for its story.
Sen. Susan Collins departs after a night Senate vote on the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., Sept. 22, 2026.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
“The Biden Justice Division discovered that there was no wrongdoing by any one among my marketing campaign employees, my workplace, or me,” the five-term Maine senator stated on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. “That is completely outrageous. It is clearly a political hit job.”
Annie Clark, Collins’ deputy chief of employees, stated that the Biden administration, FBI and Division of Justice had “totally investigated the Navatek matter.”
“The Collins marketing campaign cooperated totally with the FBI all through the investigation, producing the entire paperwork it requested and serving as reality witnesses in official settings,” Clark stated in a press release on social media, including that these “points have been resolved in 2021, and the FBI has not contacted us about Martin Kao since then.”
FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson instructed ProPublica that the company had investigated the claims in opposition to Collins years in the past “and finally discovered nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ marketing campaign. Any suggestion in any other case is completely false.”
Williamson didn’t reply to ProPublica’s questions concerning the alleged new, separate investigation launched in 2024.
Collins — who’s operating for reelection within the carefully watched Maine Senate race, which may decide the steadiness of energy within the higher chamber — stated “it’s extremely irritating and unfair to have it introduced up this near the election.”
Collins maintained that she discovered the corporate was doing 3D printing analysis to construct boats and have been awarded the protection contracts as a result of the Navy discovered its developments to be “beneficial.”
“I am telling you that that is utterly false,” Collins stated Tuesday of the ProPublica report’s allegations.
Clark on Tuesday additionally referred to as the allegations within the report “categorically false.”
“The seven-year-old allegations made in opposition to Senator Collins and her employees on this piece are categorically false. There have by no means been any allegations of wrongdoing by the Collins for Senator marketing campaign, and the marketing campaign was by no means the goal of the FBI investigation,” Clark wrote in a press release on social media.
Collins’ marketing campaign supervisor, Steve Abbott, responded to the report and referred to as the allegations false and outrageous.
“Not solely false. I might say outrageous,” Abbott stated.
Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson speaks at a city corridor on Sept. 13, 2026, in Biddeford, Maine.
Joseph Prezioso/Getty Photographs
Collins’ opponent within the Maine Senate race, Democratic candidate Troy Jackson, reacted to the report, saying “the jig is up.”
“That is corruption of the very best order,” Jackson wrote in a press release on Tuesday.
Requested for remark, PacMar Applied sciences — previously often known as Navatek — instructed ABC Information that it is “a sufferer.”
“The purpose right here is that PacMar is a sufferer, like others, of Martin Kao’s unlawful conduct and we have now devoted nice time and expense in prosecuting Martin Kao and his cabal for his or her injury to our former firm’s good title and repute,” a spokesperson wrote in a press release.
Trump has not commented on the ProPublica report.
ABC Information’ Sarah Beth Hensley contributed to this report.
