{
  "id": 9437851,
  "title": "Susan Collins Dismissed Our Reporting as Old News. Some of Her Claims Aren’t True.",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/23/susan-collins-dismissed-our-reporting-as-old-news-some-of-her-claims",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-09-23T22:34:10.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "ProPublica",
    "slug": "propublica",
    "url": "https://www.propublica.org/article/debunking-susan-collins-fbi-navatek-investigation-claims"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "On Tuesday, ProPublica published a scathing investigation into Senator Susan Collins of Maine's relationship with Martin Kao, a former Navatek CEO and significant donor. The investigation revealed that the FBI had been monitoring Collins, her aides, and a pro-Collins super PAC for years, questioning them about their ties to Navatek.\n\nPresident Donald Trump's administration later intervened, firing or pushing out most of the federal agents and lawyers investigating high-profile corruption cases, including the Kao case. This led to the premature end of the corruption review. After the ProPublica story broke, Collins and her campaign denied any wrongdoing in numerous media appearances.\n\nSome of the claims made by Collins and her representatives are inaccurate, according to the investigation. For instance, Collins claimed that \"In 2021, the Biden Justice Department found there was no wrongdoing by anyone on my campaign staff, my office or me.\" However, the investigation was conducted in 2022 through 2024, not five years ago as Collins states. The FBI investigation found no wrongdoing, as confirmed by an FBI spokesperson.\n\nAnother false claim was made by Collins' deputy chief of staff, Annie Clark, who stated, \"The FBI and the Court obviously did not believe Kao.\" However, FBI records show that Kao remained under investigation until September 2024, and his claims were corroborated by FBI documents and emails.\n\nCollins and her team also dismissed Kao's credibility, but FBI documents revealed that agents were able to corroborate some of his claims. Kao's guilty plea for campaign finance and loan fraud further validated his statements. Despite Kao's credibility issues, agents found Kao to be credible, and ProPublica corroborated much of his account through a trove of FBI evidence and interviews with people familiar with Navatek and the FBI inquiry.",
  "summary": "The post Susan Collins Dismissed Our Reporting as Old News. Some of Her Claims Aren’t True. appeared first on ProPublica .",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}