Sen. Susan Collins’ reelection campaign released new information on Tuesday that it says absolves the Republican incumbent of the recent pay-to-play allegations currently being seized on by Democrats.

Campaign Manager Steve Abbott took aim at a story published by ProPublica on Sept. 22 that, among other things, reported that former Navatek CEO Martin Kao told the FBI that Collins required political contributions before meeting with donors.

Abbott said the outlet’s reporting failed to acknowledge Collins’ full history with Navatek, the company at the center of the scandal. Collins started working with Navatek only after a local university requested defense funding, Abbott contended.

On a video call with reporters, Abbott showed a 2017 letter from the University of Maine seeking $5 million in federal funding for a project in partnership with Navatek “to launch a collaborative research program to address the U.S. Navy’s pressing need to enhance the mobility of future marine vehicles.” Collins ultimately secured the funding in the fiscal year 2018 budget.

Abbott also showed a photo of Collins meeting with Kao in her office with other officials in February of 2018. Kao later told federal investigators that Collins refused to meet that year with him unless he made a donation to her 2020 reelection campaign.

But Kao did not make his first donation to Collins until June 27, 2018, federal records show.

“ProPublica has the theory that Martin Kao, based on Martin Kao’s word, had to make a donation before he could get in to see Susan Collins,” Abbott said. “As you can see from that picture, it’s not true.”

The photo was taken by a Senate photographer on Feb. 15, 2018, embedded data showed, according to a screenshot released by the campaign.

The campaign’s media call was another example of how Collins is aggressively responding to allegations that could undercut her work as the top senate appropriator. The money she brings home to Maine is a key theme of her reelection campaign against Democrat Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president.

It also comes ahead of Collins’ first televised debate against Troy Jackson, who is likely to raise the issue of ProPublica’s reporting. Jackson has maintained a narrow lead in the Maine’s closely watched Senate race, according to most polls.

Kao pleaded guilty to charges involving money laundering and bank fraud in 2022, and is currently in federal prison. He had been cooperating with federal investigators in an effort to get his sentence reduced.

ProPublica reported that the FBI was gearing up for a widespread corruption probe of Collins and other members of Congress based on statements Kao made to investigators between 2022 and 2024. The outlet reported that the investigation was abandoned when Trump returned to office in 2025 and disbanded anti-corruption units.

After her campaign’s initial response to the ProPublica story, the outlet fact-checked statements made by Collins’ team, finding some of their claims to be false. For example, a Collins spokesperson claimed that the outlet “took the word of” Kao in their story, “someone who pled guilty to five counts of money laundering.”

ProPublica reporters contend that they independently corroborated much of his account, reviewing “a trove of evidence gathered by the FBI,” examining “thousands of pages of legal records” and interviewing “dozens of people familiar with Navatek, its Washington operations and the FBI inquiry.”

The news site reported that Kao gave $150,000 to a super PAC supporting Collins, who in turn promised to steer $32 million in additional contracts to Navatek. Kao made the illegal donation through a shell company because federal contractors are prohibited from donating to political campaigns.

But Abbott said neither Collins, nor anybody else on her staff, would have promised a specific level of funding.

“We would never say that because there is no way we would know that we could get that done,” Abbott said. “No chance that that is true. Absolutely false.”

State and national Democrats are now using the ProPublica report to push an anti-corruption message in the final month of the election.

“The facts are clear — as recently as 2025, the FBI was circling Susan Collins for her involvement in a pay-to-play scheme until the Trump administration killed the unit that was looking into her,” Misha Linnehan, spokesperson for the Maine Democratic Party, said in a statement. “No amount of bluster from Collins’ team can distract Mainers from the fact that she sold them out for campaign cash.”

WinSenate, a super PAC aligned with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, launched a $3.4 million ad campaign last week in Maine highlighting the ProPublica story.