Trump’s FBI Killed Bombshell Bribery Investigation Into Susan Collins

A massive new report from ProPublica shows that the FBI was investigating Republican Senator Susan Collins for an alleged illegal pay-to-play scheme with a defense contractor—until the Trump administration killed it.

In 2019, Collins Super PAC head Scott Reed met at a D.C. coffee shop with three executives from Hawaiian defense contractor Navatek and asked them for a $500,000 contribution. The executives counter-offered—proposing an even bigger donation in return for tens of millions of dollars in federal defense contracts. They suggested obscuring the donation through a fake shell company called “the Society of Young Women Scientist and Engineers”—as it is extremely illegal for government contractors to make political donations and for Collins to exchange federal contracts for said donations.

The Collins PAC received $150,000 from Navatek CEO Martin Kao right after the meeting, and two months later he told the company that Collins committed to giving them $32 million in naval contracts. Kao was eventually federally charged for campaign finance crimes and loan defrauding in 2022, and faces years in prison. No one from Collins’s office was charged.

Kao made all of this known to the FBI in the hopes of lessening his sentence, giving interviews all the way up into 2024. His statements revealed a massive pay-to-play apparatus that involved multiple staffers and sitting members of Congress, totaling $900,000 in Navatek donations and more than $40 million a year in federal contracts in return.

According to ProPublica, the FBI was prepared to open a massive bribery probe at the end of 2024, but the team heading the FBI investigation was eliminated when President Trump returned to office—with some of its members even being fired for investigating Trump in the past.

This is yet another instance in which the Trump administration turned a blind eye to corruption. This had the potential to be one of the biggest probes in recent history. Now we may never know the extent to which Collins—and other members of Congress—were in the pocket of this defense contractor. Kao has made political donations to dozens of politicians from both parties, including Jim Clyburn, Lindsey Graham, Joe Biden, Dick Durbin, Jeanne Shaheen, and Tulsi Gabbard.

ProPublica writes that Collins was by far Navatek’s most important business partner, doing everything she could to funnel government contracts to Kao as his company funded her campaign, even getting checks within 24 hours of votes on the defense spending bill. Collins once told Kao, “You’ve seen me deliver,” in a meeting, and Collins specifically thanked Kao, suggesting that she knew the details of their arrangement.

An even more troubling detail: The product of Navatek’s massive federal contracts were 3D-printed boats that the Navy never actually wanted—and never received.

Collins’s office denies any allegations of pay-to-play, calling them “outlandish.” This report of her accepting bribes from a defense lobbyist turned felon comes in the midst of her highly contested November Senate election.

Read the full report here.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called out the failure of the United Nations to prevent war, mentioning Israel’s genocide in Gaza and repeatedly criticizing President Trump’s policies during his speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York Tuesday.

“Generations of Palestinians will carry the pain and trauma left by the genocide of women and children perpetrated by the Netanyahu government in Gaza,” Lula said. He criticized the Trump administration’s sanctioning of Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, saying she “must not be silenced for telling the truth.”

“Illegal settlements in the West Bank are making the two-state solution increasingly unviable, essential for Israelis and Palestinians to live in safety,” Lula added.

On the Iran war, Lula said the “Strait of Hormuz has become a battleground when it should be a vital passage for international trade.”

Regarding the Trump administration’s actions to arrest Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Lula said that the “Venezuelan people deserve to decide their own destiny.” Addressing the White House’s pressure campaign against the Cuban government, Lula said that “the world watches in horror as collective punishment is imposed on 10 million people by an illegal economic and energy embargo.”

Lula additionally took a shot at the U.S. deployment of warships to Latin America, saying, “We do not need aircraft carriers guarding our waters. We need cooperation to block the flow of weapons and money that feeds organized crime. That’s the spirit of the proposal that I personally handed to the U.S. president.”

The Brazilian president closed his speech by alluding to Trump’s ally, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (currently serving a prison sentence for abuses of power and trying to undermine the country’s 2022 elections).

“We will not allow the enemies of democracy, whether domestic or foreign, to undermine popular will. Brazilian democracy belongs to Brazilians. Brazil continues to be a sovereign country. Nobody, nobody will turn us away from this path,” Lula said.

“We are called to choose between multilateralism or unilateralism, democracy or extremism, sovereignty or subordination.”

Lula is one of the few left-leaning Latin American leaders who have survived the Trump administration’s rightward policies in the region. Since his election in 2024 not only did Trump depose and arrest Maduro, but he is pressuring Cuba’s leadership and he gave heavy support to Colombia’s right-wing President Abelardo De La Espriella prior to his election earlier this year.

Unlike the U.S., Brazil tried and convicted its corrupt right-wing president, and just like last year, Lula used his U.N. speech to stand up for his principles rather than cower in fear of being sanctioned or worse.

Donald Trump openly mused about Iran’s potential annihilation before the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday.

Speaking before representatives of 193 countries, Trump painted two pictures for a potential peace deal with Iran, offering the country the chance to rebuild or be completely destroyed.

“But I have a big decision to make,” Trump said. “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world?

“Or, do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly? Never giving them a chance to kill and destroy countries again?” Trump continued.

“Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Trump asked rhetorically. “But I believe we’ll make a deal, right after the election.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is also scheduled to deliver an address to the General Assembly this week.

Trump’s incendiary remarks follow escalating rhetoric by both countries. On Sunday, Trump told Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst that his current options include “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically, or making a deal.”

In response, a spokesperson for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned Monday that “if a new aggression takes place, we will definitely change the weapons and geography of the war.”

Trump told Yingst that he would “probably” be open to meeting with Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the General Assembly, though he added that the coming weekend would be “no different from any other weekend.”

Trump has promised for months that his son-in-law, real estate developer Jared Kushner, and real estate developer turned U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff were on the brink of negotiating a peace deal with Tehran. That has not panned out.

Instead, the war has dragged on for seven months. Some of Trump’s closest advisers—including Vice President JD Vance and State Secretary Marco Rubio—have reportedly discussed the possibility that the conflict could extend beyond Inauguration Day 2029.

The president’s ratings are in the gutter.

The White House launched “TrumpTV: The Essentials Station” on Monday. The digital streaming service provides a 24/7 rotation of Trump’s rallies, speeches, and announcements, offering the American public another opportunity to tap their omnipresent president directly into their veins.

Donald Trump’s deputy assistant Kaelan Dorr described the need for such a platform on X shortly after its launch, lamenting that “the press, in some cases, reported inaccurately or not at all on the Administration’s many record breaking accomplishments on behalf of all Americans.”

Trump TV is a constant “livestream of the Administration’s greatest hits, unfiltered,” Dorr noted.

The administration’s push for Trump TV is the direct result of Trump attempting to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. The rest of the presidential press pool has ceased live coverage in solidarity with the three outlets as they sue Trump to restore their access.

But even amid a broadcast media blackout, practically nobody has tuned in to see what Trump is up to.

At the time of publication, just 1,700 viewers were watching the president’s YouTube stream. Trump TV offered a smattering of old news, switching from an ancient Trump rally to a Melania Trump speech about the creative uses for AI that she originally delivered in January.

Fourteen hours earlier, Trump TV had launched with around 8,000 viewers, according to The Daily Beast. That’s when it peaked.

About 90 minutes after that, viewership declined to 4,000. By 9 p.m. on Monday, its audience had sunk to 3,000 viewers—a paltry percentage of the channel’s 3,220,000 subscribers.

Trump announced Friday that he was banning MS NOW, CNN, and Politico from the White House, writing on Truth Social that the prohibition was the result of “FAKE NEWS.”

The president’s unprecedented attack on the free press inspired collective action by America’s largest broadcasters, which considered the ban an assault on the First Amendment and an affront to news institutions across the country. By Monday, all the broadcasters in the White House press pool—including NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox News—had joined together to suspend coverage of the president and his actions until he reversed course.

By Monday afternoon, Trump’s plan to silence the media had clearly backfired: The absence of any prominent media organizations left Trump without a microphone and without a camera at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the White House lawn, delivering remarks that nobody could hear.

Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that communism is somehow the greatest threat facing the United States. Now GOP members are fuming as the president prepares to embrace Chinese President Xi Jinping, leader of the Chinese Communist Party.

A Republican close to the White House told Politico’s Playbook Tuesday that Jinping’s state visit was coming at a time when Trump’s attention was needed elsewhere. 

“I don’t think people really want to see you toasting the Chinese premier,” this person told Politico. “You’re hosting this glamorous state dinner at a time when people are like, ‘Are you focused on me?’”

Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based GOP strategist. told Playbook that Xi’s state visit was “just another in a string of examples where Trump’s message and Republicans’ don’t jibe.”

“The in-your-face arguments from Republicans this election cycle is that Democrats want to bring socialism or communism to America,” Marson said. “Trump warmly embracing two of the most outspoken leaders of those ideologies makes it that much harder for the message to resonate with voters.”

That second leader Marson mentioned is New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Xi’s state visit comes on the heels of Trump’s visit to Gracie Mansion on Monday.  

Mamdani, a democratic socialist and the city’s first Muslim mayor, has been maligned by Republicans as a sort of boogeyman—but it’s clear that Trump just adores him. Some of the president’s sycophantic followers couldn’t cope.

Self-described proud Islamophobe Laura Loomer was particularly annoyed. 

“I’m pissed off,” she wrote on X. “We work so hard to combat the radical left and the anti-American Islamic jihadists who work to destroy our country everyday. And for what? So they can be rewarded? There is never going to be any accountability. I realized that today. We will never see it.”

“Meeting with communists and jihadists doesn’t energize people,” she wrote in a separate post. 

“Anyway, November is going to be a bust,” she wrote in another. “We tried. But there’s only so much you can do.”