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Susan Collins’ corruption has long been rumored but hard to prove. For years, she’s sold herself as a ‘reasonable Republican’, an independent voice willing to buck her own party when it mattered most to her constituents. But she is, by all accounts, just like every other member of the Republican Party: selfish, self-interested, corrupt, and she doesn’t give a damn about you.
And now, a bombshell investigation is ripping the mask off. Because the Susan Collins described in this reporting looks a hell of a lot more like the Susan Collins I’ve been telling you about all along.
According to ProPublica, the FBI had been building a bribery case with Susan Collins at its center. A defense contractor CEO told agents he traded campaign cash for Navy contracts. And his most important patron in Washington was – you guessed it – Susan Collins.
And let’s be clear about what we’re talking about here. Government contractors are prohibited from making political contributions. But trading campaign money for an official act is something even more serious: criminal bribery.
The money trail isn’t a rumor. It’s documented. The CEO routed $150,000 to Collins’ super PAC through a shell company. Weeks later, he was telling colleagues that her office had committed to a whopping $32 million in funding for his company. You don’t need me to tell you what that looks like. $150,000 goes into the political operation. Weeks later, $32 million in taxpayer money is reportedly headed toward the donor’s company.
And don’t let anyone tell you Collins’ team was in the dark. Her super PAC chair called the shell company plan “very smart.” Her campaign reached out so Collins could personally thank the donor. Having worked in this sector for over two decades, I’ll tell you right now: no one picks up the phone to thank a stranger out of the kindness of their heart. They knew exactly who was paying and exactly what he wanted. At a minimum, this wasn’t some anonymous check disappearing into the machinery of American campaign finance. There was a relationship here. There was access. And there was a hell of a lot of taxpayer money on the other side of it.
So what did taxpayers get for their $32 million? Nothing. Former employees say the research produced nothing the Navy actually wanted. One said it amounted to PowerPoint slides and a white paper. Think about that. Thirty-two million dollars of your money, and the deliverable was a slide deck? Give me a break.
And then we get to the part of this story that I can’t stop thinking about: Donald Trump made it all go away almost overnight. Kash Patel purged the FBI’s anti-corruption squad. The Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, the unit whose entire job is investigating politicians, collapsed. And according to the reporting, this was happening just as agents were getting ready to widen the probe to lawmakers in both parties. The people whose job was to find out who in Congress was selling access were gone before the investigation could answer the question.
Here’s the part that should make every Maine voter furious: this isn’t ancient history Collins can wave away as something involving people who disappeared from her political orbit years ago. The people at the center of this story are still in her inner circle. Her 2026 finance director and the chair of her super PAC are the same people.
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Susan Collins is a sitting United States senator. This is her political operation. These are her people. Collins sells her appropriations power to Maine voters as her greatest asset. Send me back, she says, and I’ll bring the money home. She doesn’t get to take credit for every dollar she brings home to Maine while pretending she bears no responsibility for what happens inside the political machine built around her.
Her defense? The FBI cleared her. But you can’t be cleared by an investigation that was killed before it finished. The questions were never answered because Trump’s Justice Department made sure nobody would ever get to ask them.
Our country is going through the wringer right now because we have a generation of politicians who have spent decades getting comfortable inside a political system that rewards access, money, longevity, and protecting the people already holding power. Who have been led by Donald Trump and Susan Collins, who are, in my opinion, among the most corrupt we’ve ever seen. And Susan Collins has been extraordinarily talented at hiding that corruption from the people of Maine and from the American people. She built herself a brand as the independent Republican, the reasonable one, the one who deserves the votes of Democrats and independents.
That brand is finished. She’s exposed herself, and not just with the corruption I’ve laid out here. She saved Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. She let Donald Trump carry on his illegal war in Iran. And there are so many other times she’s betrayed the very values she promised the people of Maine.
It’s time for her to go. It’s time for Donald Trump to go. And it’s time for this entire generation of Republican politicians, and the other do-nothings in Washington, including a lot of people in my own party, to step aside and let the next generation take over.
It’s our time now.
And in Maine, voters now have a direct choice about what comes next. Collins is running for a sixth term against Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger and former president of the Maine Senate who has made working people, labor rights, health care, and the influence of wealthy interests central themes of his campaign.
It’s time for the people of Maine to kick her to the curb and elect someone who will fight for working people in their state. That’s Troy Jackson.
We need to transform this country back into a place where you can work hard and rise in the economy, where people don’t go bankrupt when they get sick, where corruption isn’t so rampant that it strips us of our dignity, and where our political leaders answer to us — not to billionaires and corporate super PACs, not to people wealthy enough to buy access, but to the people they’re supposed to serve. We need a country where public service actually means public service.
I believe that can happen. Look at the wave we’re building heading into November. If it holds, and if we can stop Republicans from buying this election or outright stealing it, we can send a powerful message and put this country a little closer to heading in the right direction. In 2028, we can elect a president who will do the same. And in 2029, we can get back to doing the people’s work.
I believe we’re in a strong position to do that. And we’re in that position because of the brazenness and arrogance of people like Donald Trump and Susan Collins, who have been getting away with this for far too long.
Vote the bastards out.
With urgency,
–Mike
She initially said she was only going to run for 2 terms….that was her first lie and tells you exactly who she has always been…a corrupt politician who lies everytime she opens her mouth and that’s why she loved Kavanaugh…same liar!
Well said Mike. I have been following the Maine election because of my administration of Heather Cox Richardson who lives in Maine and occasionally speaks about that election. Collins definitely needs to go. Every single one of the dishonest needs to go. I'm sick of it.