Trump’s FBI Killed Bribery Probe Into Lindsey Graham—and James Clyburn

The FBI was investigating South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democratic Representative Jim Clyburn for a massive pay-to-play bribery scandal involving a Hawaiian naval defense firm. Then the FBI eliminated the team working on the case upon President Trump’s return to office.

New reporting from ProPublica details the dealings of the South Carolina politicians with Navatek executives, including CEO Martin Kao, who told the FBI that he was exchanging campaign donations and gifts for millions of dollars in naval contracts.

In March 2020, the late Senator Graham met with Navatek lobbyists at Charlie Palmer Steak in Washington, D.C, and made a deal to give a $10 million government contract to Navatek in exchange for $100,000 in campaign donations, on top of the $40,000 he charged just for the meeting, according to Kao.

“This is how much I want, and how much I am going to give you,” Graham allegedly told Kao.

Clyburn, one of the highest-ranking Democrats in the House, also met with Navatek leaders—and asked them to match Graham’s campaign gift of $100,000 in exchange for political favors. Fellow South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson, a Republican, also allegedly made cash-for-contract dealings with Navatek.

Kao was eventually arrested for campaign finance violations in September 2020 and confessed to federal agents that Navatek’s entire business model relied solely on bribing public officials in exchange for government contracts. The agents working on the case told their superiors their investigation could eventually include the lawmakers involved, but they were fired as the Department of Justice took revenge on the public corruption team, which previously investigated Trump.

This reporting from ProPublica is a continuation of its investigation into Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, who also received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Navatek in exchange for tens of millions of dollars in federal defense contracts. Collins’s PAC received $150,000 from Kao right after their own D.C. restaurant meeting in 2019, and two months later, Kao informed Navatek that Collins committed to giving it $32 million in naval contracts.

This had the potential to be one of the biggest political corruption scandals of the modern era, a tangible exposé of just how much influence lobbyists actually have in Washington and how eager our self-interested politicians are to take money from them. And the FBI knew that. But as soon as Trump returned to office in 2025, the case was killed. This move inadvertently prevented a bipartisan whale of a corruption scandal from fully coming to light. And while Kao remains in jail, none of the powerful senators the FBI was investigating have faced any kind of repercussions—thanks to Trump. The team can’t even file a new case.

“You gotta hand it to Trump: he holds the consistent position that, Republican OR Democrat, bribery is not a crime,” journalist Matthew Chapman wrote on X. “He’ll cook up any number of bogus charges to take down his political enemies. But he’ll never go after bribery, even if it’s his enemies doing it.”

Kao has made political donations to dozens of politicians from both parties, including Joe Biden, Dick Durbin, Jeanne Shaheen, and Tulsi Gabbard. Clyburn, Graham, and Wilson’s offices all deny Kao’s quid pro quo allegations.

President Trump tried to defend Republican Senator Roger Marshall on Monday night at a rally in Park City, Kansas, but ended up using an antisemitic slur in the process.

“[Marshall] was given a bum rap because he was mandated by law to request strongly money owed from patients. You’re not allowed not to do it. You have to by law go after these people, and they made it, like, oh, he was some kind of a Shylock-type guy,” Trump said in a speech to the crowd.

The term refers to a Jewish character in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice who is portrayed as a cunning moneylender, fueling stereotypes about the Jewish people. In a guide for educators, the Anti-Defamation League states “Shylock, and by extension, all Jews, are presented as money-hungry, conniving, and cruel.”

Trump used the term in a speech last year about a bill he was trying to pass, distinguishing between respectable bankers and exploitative ones.

“No going to the banks and borrowing from in some cases a fine banker, and in some cases Shylocks and bad people,” Trump said at the time. Following the event, when reporters questioned him about its antisemitic origins, Trump said he had “never heard that.”

Marshall, who was a doctor before entering politics, is under fire for suing hundreds of patients over unpaid medical bills, even pursuing criminal charges over debts as little as $101. His record has given Democrats an opening in the normally safe Kansas Senate seat, with Democratic nominee pastor Adam Hamilton seizing the opportunity and polling neck and neck with Marshall.

“There are 2,000 verses in the Bible that speak to caring for the poor,” Hamilton said at a debate with Marshall last month. “This is not happening under this man.”

Eleven people with lawful permanent resident status were arrested in California Monday for alleged voter fraud. Hours later, First Assistant Attorney for California Bill Essayli admitted that they may not have even voted.

The arrests were announced in a Department of Justice press release, which lauded the capture of California residents as part of “Operation Protect the Vote”—an effort to purge voting rolls of alleged “noncitizens” ahead of November’s midterm elections. On October 14, the Trump administration gave the Golden State a flash drive of nearly 200,000 “likely noncitizen” voters it had identified. The method used to identify them remains unclear.

The administration then demanded that the state take “immediate action to ensure that noncitizens do not vote in the upcoming federal election.” If California refused, the administration said it would have “no choice but to seek emergency relief.

In reality, noncitizen voting remains incredibly marginal, and “Operation Protect the Vote” in California is a thinly veiled attempt to target immigrants, spread fear, and restrict voting access in a Democratic stronghold.

“Every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a lawful American citizen,” said acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter. “Each of the 28 defendants charged today appears on the list of more than 20,000 likely noncitizen registrants we provided to California election officials last week. California refused to look at that list. Today’s charges show exactly what that refusal puts at risk. California must verify the citizenship of those more than 20,000 registrants before mail-in ballots are counted.”

“I think the majority did cast a vote in a prior election. Not all, but most did,” Essayli said in a press conference following the arrests, admitting that the DOJ’s “high confidence” list of fraudulent noncitizen voters is not at all foolproof.

These indefensible arrests are the latest chapter in the DOJ’s quest to weaponize voter registration data and throw due process to the wind, using “voter fraud” as a blanket accusation for anyone the Trump administration doesn’t like.

President Donald Trump nearly berated a reporter—until he realized they were with a right-wing blog.

While speaking to the press outside of the White House Monday, a reporter asked Trump to respond to French President Emmanuel Macron, who’d blamed his country’s growing protests on elevated fuel prices caused by military activity in the Persian Gulf.

“Emmanuel Macron is blaming the Iran war and you, essentially, for the rioting in France right now—” one reporter said, suggesting that Macron had made a dig at Trump. The president didn’t let her finish.

“I don’t think he is, no I think that’s fake news. Who are you with?” Trump said.

“No sir, I’m Mary Margaret [Olohan] with the Daily Wire,” the reporter said, identifying herself.

“Oh, Daily Wire’s good. Sorry, Daily Wire’s good,” Trump said, suddenly apologetic.

Trump’s obstinacy is reserved only for mainstream media outlets—the same ones the president has illegally exiled from the White House and lashed out against time and time again.

It’s no secret that Trump’s meddling in the Strait of Hormuz has spiraled into a regional conflict. The president’s supposedly “six-week war” has nearly reached its eighth month, continuing to hurt U.S. and global economies. Trump’s continued unwillingness to acknowledge his own shoddy execution—or seriously address the economic impact that it’s having—shows that the president has no intention of taking responsibility for what’s happening in his own country, let alone France.

Vice President JD Vance called a brown man at his rally an “illegal immigrant” because he interrupted his rally to demand the release of the Epstein files.

“[The] corrupt, far-left cartel has subjected this country—” Vance was saying at his North Carolina rally, before the protester stood up directly behind him.

“God bless our children!” the man in the crowd yelled. “Release the Epstein files!”

Chants of “USA” began to drown him out as he was removed from the rally by security.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna have to amend something I said earlier. I said that we have had zero illegal border crossings in the United States of America,” Vance said with a smile, implying that the protester was not a U.S. citizen. “But one isn’t bad, right?”

Vance’s response was lambasted by those to his left, as many saw his response to another call to release the Epstein files—something Trump himself campaigned on—as contradictory.

“They’re kicking people out of Republican rallies for shouting the same things they’ve been shouting at Republican rallies for years,” Puerto Rican journalist Benjamín Torres Gotay wrote on X.

“It’s insulting to suggest only ‘illegal immigrants’ care about justice for victims and accountability for perpetrators,” California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press office posted. “Most American citizens do too!”

The Trump administration promised its supporters a full release of the Epstein files that would expose the “deep state” and bring justice to survivors. Instead it has continued to obscure information and avoid transparency, with Attorney General Todd Blanche refusing to seriously meet with survivors, survivors getting kicked out of the GOP midterm convention, and now Vance’s assumption that a nonwhite individual calling for justice must be some kind of illegal alien.