Martin Kao

One of the agents who had taken Cao's confession was pushed out as retribution for her role in investigating Trump's attempt to overturn the twenty twenty election.

Dozens of agents and prosecutors quit amid the department's destruction, including the career attorney assigned to Kao's case.

Trump's Justice Department no longer takes on public corruption in any meaningful fashion, former officials said.

The investigation sparked by Kao's revelations is dead, and the government is no longer talking to an informant who had offered a roadmap to corruption in Congress.

The White House referred ProPublica to the FBI.

FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said the agency had investigated claims against Collins years ago and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins' campaign.

Any suggestion otherwise is totally false.

Williamson said the Trump administration has removed agents only if they have been found to have acted unethically, undermined the mission, or engaged in weaponization of law enforcement.

According to AARP, the news about the poll came out the same week that ProPublica published a bombshell report about corruption allegations against Susan Collins.

According to the report, the FBI was investigating Collins' relationship with Martin Kao, CEO of defense contractor Navitek, and one of her top donors.

Kao claimed the head of a pro-Collins super PAC met with him and and other Navitek execs in 2019 and asked for a $500,000 donation,

which is illegal.

And so we report in our story that Martin, his family members, other members of, you know, top Navitek employees, start to make donations to Collins.

And we report at the top of the story about this fateful meeting where Martin Kao and other company executives meets with the head of Susan Collins Super PAC, a man named Scott Reed, where they eventually hash out a deal and Martin creates a shell company to give $150,000 to Collins' campaign.

Just hold on.

When you say Susan Collins super PAC, was this a political committee that she had started or were her employees involved in it or consultants? This is a separate

Well, our reporting contradicts what the Collins campaign said, right? And we're reporting that agents were continuing to investigate through the Trump administration.

And, you know, Collins saying that they were exonerated during the Biden administration simply isn't true that, you know, they've said that they were exonerated in 2021.

Well, FBI agents flew to Hawaii and were interviewing Martin Kao about his personal interactions with Susan Collins in 2024.

And that's according to FBI sources or Kao?