ProPublica published a report Tuesday alleging that Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) was involved in a pay-to-play scheme during her 2020 reelection campaign and that the Trump administration shut down the resulting FBI investigation. The Federalist responded the same day with a pointed rebuttal, calling the story a “hit piece” and questioning the credibility of the sources ProPublica relied on to make its case.
At the center of the dispute is Martin Kao, a Hawaii-based defense contractor who ran Navatek, a company that sought government contracts in Maine. According to ProPublica, a staffer from Collins’ campaign met with Kao, who allegedly offered to route donations to Collins through a shell company in exchange for government work — but wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from. ProPublica also reported that the investigation was later halted.
Collins Team Rejects Allegations
Collins’ office flatly denied the story’s core claims. Annie Clark, deputy chief of staff for Collins, told The Federalist that the campaign “was never the target of the FBI investigation.”
Clark also argued that ProPublica’s framing relies on a deeply compromised witness. She pointed out that Kao “pled guilty to five counts of money laundering, three counts of wire fraud, one count of bank fraud, and making false submissions to the FEC.” Clark added that after his plea, while awaiting sentencing, Kao “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.”
ProPublica itself acknowledged some of these credibility problems. As The Federalist noted, the outlet wrote that Kao was “facing years in prison” and “hoped to do less time by revealing the entire scheme,” and conceded that he “had credibility issues” as “a felon trying to avoid a lengthy prison sentence.”
Yet The Federalist argued that ProPublica built its story around Kao anyway, giving his account top billing despite the outlet’s own reported doubts.
The Second Source Under Scrutiny
ProPublica also leaned on former FBI agent Kevin Gounaud and his colleague Michelle Ball, describing them as “experienced agents in the FBI’s elite anti-corruption unit.” According to ProPublica, the two “zeroed in” on Collins even though Kao had alleged connections to “more than a dozen members of Congress and their staff.” ProPublica reported that their inquiry ended when the agents became “casualties of Trump’s retribution campaign.”
The Federalist pushed back hard on that characterization, arguing that Gounaud’s background reveals a pattern of targeting Republicans rather than neutral corruption-fighting. The outlet wrote that Gounaud spent weeks in 2017 seeking assignment to Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s investigation into alleged Trump campaign ties to Russia. More recently, The Federalist noted, Gounaud sent an email in February 2025 to a supervisor recommending a criminal investigation of Elon Musk over Musk’s proposal to have federal employees report five accomplishments from their work week — emails that were released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
“If ProPublica’s two key subjects — including a criminal and a man with a history of targeting Republicans — was not enough to cast a shadow of doubt on the credibility and bias of this story and outlet,” The Federalist wrote, “let’s not forget the outlet has spent years running anti-Republican propaganda.”
A Broader Critique of ProPublica
The Federalist’s piece went beyond the Collins story to catalogue other ProPublica investigations it characterized as politically motivated. It cited ProPublica’s reporting on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, including stories about undisclosed vacations with longtime friend Harlan Crow. The Federalist, referencing commentary by Mark Paoletta, argued that ProPublica cited left-wing ethics experts funded by “the same left-wing billionaires funding ProPublica,” and failed to note that the Judicial Conference of the United States had already ruled in 2012 that Thomas did not fail to disclose required information.
The Federalist also pointed to ProPublica’s reporting on Thomas’ use of a $65 ticket to attend a University of Nebraska football game — below the $415 reporting threshold — and claimed the outlet was told the ticket price by the Nebraska Athletic Office but omitted it. Paoletta was quoted calling them “dishonest journalists.”
Additionally, The Federalist recalled a ProPublica story about Secretary of War Pete Hegseth that the outlet pulled before publication after Hegseth released his West Point acceptance letter.
The Federalist acknowledged that “Congress and big corporations have a rather unsettling relationship” and that it is possible other members of Congress, from both parties, engage in questionable lobbying practices. But it argued that the combination of a history of targeting Republicans, flimsy sourcing, and political timing — with leftists “desperately trying to beat” Collins in upcoming midterms — suggests the ProPublica piece is not worth taking seriously.
The FBI has denied the claims at the heart of the ProPublica story, and no one from Collins’ team has been charged. The dispute highlights a familiar dynamic in political media: outlets on the right and left accusing each other of biased reporting, with each side pointing to the other’s sourcing, funding, and past coverage as evidence of bad faith. ProPublica has not issued a public response to The Federalist’s critique.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/09/23/discredited-activists-at-propublica-cite-other-discredited-activists-to-concoct-susan-collins-hit-piece/