Susan Collins Denies Corruption Allegations, Accusing Democrats of ‘Hit Job’ Less Than Six Weeks Before Midterm Election

Senator Susan Collins is strongly denying allegations that she ever engaged in any kind of pay-to-play scheme after ProPublica reported on Tuesday that the FBI had opened an investigation into a 2019 straw donor payment to a political action committee supporting her 2020 re-election campaign. The report states that the investigation into Ms. Collins and her campaign was only shuttered after President Trump returned to the White House. According to the ProPublica report, the head of a pro-Collins super PAC at the time, Scott Reed, asked executives from a defense contractor, Navatek, to donate $500,000 to Ms. Collins’ 2020 re-election campaign — a race she would go on to win by nearly ten points. After meeting with Mr. Reed, the chief executive of Navatek, Martin Kao, donated $150,000 to Ms. Collins’ political action committee, 1820 PAC, through a shell company called the Society of Young Women Scientists and Engineers, LLC. ProPublica reports that Kao only made the donation after his company won assurances that Ms. Collins would help them secure tens of millions of dollars in government contracts. Kao made the allegations only after he had pleaded guilty to several counts of fraud in federal court, including charges of wire fraud, money laundering, and bank fraud. Ms. Collins says Kao only began making the accusations five years after the donation was made in order to help lessen his sentence following his guilty plea. “This was investigated by the Biden Justice Department and the FBI … the Biden Justice Department found there was no wrongdoing by anyone on my campaign staff, my office, or me,” Ms. Collins told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday. “This is absolutely outrageous. It’s clearly a political hit job.” She went on to say that she never had “anything” to do with 1820 PAC, and that Mr. Reed would “never” commit any kind of campaign finance violation. She went on to say that she believes that Senate Democrats may be behind the story, alleging that the minority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, is coming after her using deceptive tactics given she is arguably the most vulnerable Senate Republican up for re-election this year. “It’s obvious if you look at the tactics that Chuck Schumer always uses,” she said. Before Ms. Collins made her comments to the press, her office called the allegations “categorically false.”“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, including alleging that our office required contributions before taking meetings and engaged in extortion, pay for play, and bribery,” Ms. Collins’ deputy chief of staff, Annie Clark, said in a statement Tuesday. “These issues were resolved in 2021, and the FBI has not contacted us about Martin Kao since then,” Ms. Clark said. In a statement to ProPublica, an FBI spokesman said the investigation prompted by Kao’s allegations “ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign.”Ms. Collins is currently locked in the tightest political battle of her professional career, with Democrats pouring tens of millions of dollars into the race to unseat her. Ms. Collins’ Democratic opponent, former Maine senate president Troy Jackson, is in a statistical tie with Ms. Collins in the polls even though Vice President Kamala Harris won Maine in the last presidential election.

Susan Collins Denies Corruption Allegations, Accusing Democrats of ‘Hit Job’ Less Than Six Weeks Before Midterm Election

Susan Collins Denies Corruption Allegations, Accusing Democrats of ‘Hit Job’ Less Than Six Weeks Before Midterm Election

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