The FBI Was Building a Bribery Case Against Susan Collins

Then the Trump Justice Department shut it down.

Sep 23, 2026

“To the Victor Belong the Spoils”

That’s the President of the United States, at the United Nations, describing American foreign policy.

Trump addressed the 81st General Assembly on Tuesday and used it to boast about the invasion of Venezuela and the removal of Nicolás Maduro — announcing a 65-billion-barrel oil deal he called “perhaps the biggest deal ever made.” Then the lede: “To the victor belong the spoils, you’ve all heard that. Our actions in Venezuela are proof that the United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.”

He turned to Iran and said he faces a choice between a deal and moving to “annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly,” driving it “into hell.” He told the assembly the U.S. will not join any global regulation of AI, and urged other countries to abandon the International Criminal Court — the body that prosecutes war crimes. When he said Cuba “will fall,” the Cuban delegation stood up and walked out.

Asked about ending the Iran war, Trump told the General Assembly: "I believe we'll make a deal right after the election because it doesn't make sense for them not to. They're waiting to see how I do in the midterm election."

Republicans Now Oppose A War They Voted For Six Times

Aaron Parnas reports that House and Senate Republicans are now telling reporters they expect to “get crushed” in November. Gas is near $4.50. Diesel tops $6.50. NBC has Democrats up five on the generic ballot; Fox has it at seven. Sen. John Kennedy said Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa “ought to be fat guy layups for us” — and aren’t.

So suddenly Republicans are discovering they oppose the war. Semafor's Burgess Everett reports that Mike Rogers in Michigan, Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson in Iowa, Rep. John James in Michigan, and Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio have all now called for it to end.

Don’t let them off the hook. They had six chances to end this war, and Congress has already gone home until after the midterm elections.

The House has voted on Iran war powers resolutions six times this year. The most recent passed on September 15, 220–204, with seven Republicans joining every Democrat. Three of those seven were voting that way for the first time.

Ashley Hinson, running for Iowa's open Senate seat, has voted against ending the war all six times — including on September 15, eight days ago. On Monday she posted: "Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn't have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran… the war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end." NBC asked her campaign about her prior votes. Her campaign didn't respond.

Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks did flip on September 15. Both are in toss-up districts. Both had voted no on every previous attempt this year. Miller-Meeks’s explanation: “I said it in March: the mission had to stay focused and limited.” In March she voted against ending it.

And Nunn’s timing deserves its own paragraph. On August 17 — a month before his vote — he hosted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for a campaign fundraiser at the Iowa State Fair, where Hegseth praised him as a needed ally for backing the department’s military actions in Iran and its spending requests. Four weeks later he decided the war had gone on too long.

Sarah Trone Garriott, running against Nunn: "Nunn voted for the war five times, campaigned with Pete Hegseth, and called it 'worth it.' Now, just ahead of the midterms, he's trying to back away." Christina Bohannan, running against Miller-Meeks: "The fact that it took her until weeks before an election to realize how angry the people she represents are shows just how out of touch she is."

The CBO now puts the war’s cost at $38 billion through August 1, rising $2 to $3 billion a month, and projects it will add half a point to inflation heading into 2027. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva warned this week that “winter is coming” on prices: “We should prepare for people being more unhappy. Maybe on the street.”

None of these people had a change of heart. They read a poll. The vote that would have mattered was in March, and in April, and in June, and in July. They took all six and chose Trump every time.

The Press Ban and A Merger.

On Friday, Trump barred CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from White House grounds for reporting “FICTION and LIES,” warning “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.” Saturday, reporters’ credentials were confiscated at the security kiosk. Sunday, he posted an AI-generated image of trash bags labeled with their names. Monday morning, all three sued in federal court, calling the ban “a direct assault on the First Amendment” and asking for emergency relief.

They’ll likely win. Trump announced his reason himself — he dislikes their coverage — which is textbook viewpoint discrimination. CNN sued over Jim Acosta’s credentials in 2018 and won. Per Wall Street Journal reporting relayed by Zeteo, the ban surprised Trump’s own staff and came after Natalie Harp — the aide who spent a year dodging her security clearance and rode with him in the catering truck out of Ankara — showed him clips.

On Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and eleven other Democratic attorneys general dropped their antitrust suit against Paramount’s roughly $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. The deal puts CBS, CNN, HBO, TNT, MTV, and both studios under David and Larry Ellison — major Trump donors.

Bonta was winning. In July, Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a temporary restraining order rejecting many of Paramount’s arguments and set trial for March. Then the Ellisons started threatening to move Paramount out of California, and Newsom and Mayor Bass pushed for a settlement.

What Bonta got: no divestitures. Not one. Not even CNN. Thirty theatrical films a year — which, as Matt Stoller points out, is fewer than the two studios already release. $1.5 billion in domestic production. Terms David Ellison had publicly offered in a New York Times op-ed back in August. The Hollywood Reporter called the whole thing “a stern finger wag.”

And the centerpiece, the “news editorial independence board” meant to protect CNN and CBS News: five journalists, charged with monitoring “editorial independence, including from… ownership and shareholders” — appointed by Paramount’s board of directors. The watchdog is picked by the people it watches. Bonta’s own description: “The state of California will have no input in it. No government entity will have any input into it.”

Jane Fonda called the agreement a union-buster. Kara Swisher is quitting her CNN contributor role rather than work for the Ellisons.

I'm not sure how much the ban itself matters. CNN can still report, and a judge will likely restore the credentials within weeks.

The merger is the one that lasts. And if the Ellisons run CNN the way they've run CBS News, the audience won't wait around for the editorial independence board to save them — they'll go where the reporting still is. That migration is why Zeteo, The Bulwark, and Popular Information broke most of what you just read, and why you’re reading this instead of watching a cable panel.

That’s not a happy ending. Losing CNN is a real loss, and a healthy country doesn’t rebuild its press one Substack at a time. But it does mean the people who thought they were buying the conversation bought a building the audience is already leaving.

“Senator Collins Would Like to Call Martin to Thank Him”

That sentence is from an email sent by a staffer at Susan Collins’ super PAC, seven days after the PAC cashed a $150,000 check that a federal contractor had illegally funneled through a fake nonprofit.

ProPublica published the full story Tuesday: the FBI spent five years building a bribery case against Maine’s senior senator, and the Trump Justice Department shut it down.

Here is what the documents show.

In 2018, Martin Kao, CEO of the Hawaii defense contractor Navatek, tried to meet with Collins. He was told he’d need to donate first. When they did meet, he pitched an $8 million research grant for Navatek and the University of Maine. A 2019 email from a Navy official reads: “I spoke with Sen. Collins office regarding the $8M. The interested company is Navatek.”

In late 2019, at a Corner Bakery in Washington, Scott Reed — head of the pro-Collins 1820 PAC — asked Kao for $500,000. Kao said Navatek wanted something back: tens of millions in additional federal funding. Federal contractors are flatly barred from making campaign contributions, so the money would move through a shell company. Kao wanted assurance Collins would know where it came from. Reed confirmed she would, and that Navatek would get its contracts.

A $150,000 down payment arrived through an entity called “the Society of Young Women Scientist [sic] and Engineers.”

Seven days after it cleared, that email went out asking for Kao’s phone number, because the senator wanted to thank him.

A few weeks later, Kao’s team met with Collins’ office and came out with money. His email to his executives: “We were very warmly received. Excellent meeting. Total of $32M will be supported.” That year, the Senate allocated at least $10 million based on Navatek’s proposals. At the time, Collins sat on the Appropriations Committee. Now she chairs it.

Then it started to unravel. The Campaign Legal Center noticed a typo in the shell company’s name on the check and filed an FEC complaint. A Hawaii reporter traced the fake nonprofit to Kao’s wife. And as Kao scrambled to cover it up, Cleta Mitchell — a lawyer for Collins’ super PAC — suggested the shell company start making other charitable donations in Maine to make it look legitimate.

Now for a slight legal caveat. The Corner Bakery conversation comes from Kao himself, who is serving 87 months for pandemic-relief fraud plus 33 concurrent months for these campaign crimes, and who started talking while hoping to shave time off his sentence. Scott Reed denies ever having this conversation.

So set Kao aside. The check is real. The fake nonprofit is real. The "thank him" email is real. The "$32M will be supported" email is real. The $10 million is real.

Federal law flatly bars government contractors from giving money to federal candidates or their committees. Not "limits" — bars. Navatek held Navy contracts, so Navatek could not legally write the $150,000 check, and everyone involved knew it. That's why the money moved through a fake nonprofit instead. Routing a contribution through a shell entity to hide its true source is its own separate federal crime: the straw-donor ban. Three Navatek executives – Lawrence Lum Kee, Clifford Chen, and Martin Kao – pleaded guilty to these crimes.

The open question, the one the FBI spent five years investigating before the Trump administration gutted the entire department, involved Senator Collins.

Under federal law, bribery is the exchange of money given or accepted in return for an official act. As ProPublica put it, for the company to offer donations to Collins in exchange for an official action, or for Collins to accept, "would constitute criminal bribery." The ask at the bakery, the assurance that Collins would know where the money came from, the assurance that the contracts would follow, the $150,000, the phone call to say thank you, the meeting, the $32 million, the $10 million that actually moved.

By late 2024, the agents working the case asked their superiors for authorization to open a formal bribery investigation. Then Trump was inaugurated; those senior officials were replaced, and the request went nowhere.

Susan Collins’ entire pitch to Maine is that, even though you might not like Trump AND even though I’ve been a complete shill for Trump, I’m still delivering for Maine.

Her office announced in February that she’d secured $428.6 million for 158 Maine projects this year alone, nearly $1.5 billion since 2021. “As Chair of the Appropriations Committee, I fought hard to ensure this important funding was included.”

She’s right that the seat on the Appropriations Committee delivers. ProPublica’s reporting raises the question of who else it was delivering for.

That’s your Wednesday. Trump bragged about conquest at the UN. Republicans discovered they oppose a war they funded six times. He banned three newsrooms and Democrats gave away two more. And the Collins bribery probe was killed by the Justice Department.

The midterms are 41 days away.

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