On Friday, U.S. Senator Susan Collins found herself in an unusually personal and defensive position, responding to explosive allegations published by the investigative outlet ProPublica that she and members of her staff had conspired with a convicted fraudster to steer defense spending in exchange for campaign contributions. The story, reported by William Turton and others, described a pay-to-play scheme allegedly involving Martin Kao, a defense contractor who was later convicted on federal charges. During an appearance on Maine Wire TV, Collins sat down with Steve Robinson and Graham Pollard to push back on the report with visible frustration and indignation. “The allegations against my staff, whether it’s campaign or official, and me are absolutely false and absolutely outrageous,” she said. “Who knows me knows that I’m a person of integrity, that I’ve served Maine honestly my entire time I’ve been honored to represent Maine in the United States Senate.” She went further, saying she was deeply offended by what she called a “partisan hit job,” and she pointed to the political leanings and funding sources of ProPublica, singling out George Soros and Donald Sussman as left-wing billionaires whose support she suggested had shaped the outlet’s work. The timing of the article, she argued, was not accidental. She reminded viewers that similar allegations had been raised six years earlier and were investigated by the Biden administration’s Justice Department and the FBI, which she said found no truth to any of the claims against her or her staff. It was a forceful, at times emotional opening to an interview that would range from scandal to election integrity to organized crime along the northern border.
The interview began with Robinson recounting his own conversation with Turton earlier that hour, pressing the reporter for evidence that Collins had direct knowledge of or involvement in the alleged scheme. According to Robinson, Turton’s case ultimately rested on Martin Kao and an email suggesting that Collins would call him, along with conversations with FBI agents who had looked into the matter. Collins responded without hesitation, dismissing the foundation of the reporting as unreliable. “The person who is the convicted liar is Martin Kao, and he is in jail right now,” she said. “He was convicted twice, two separate trials: one in Hawaii, one in D.C. He is the felon, and that anyone would take the word of a convicted felon over the FBI, the Justice Department, and me—I just don’t understand that.” She explained that Kao had begun making these accusations only when he was awaiting sentencing, and she described them as a desperate attempt to spin a news story in the hopes of receiving a more lenient sentence. The judge, the prosecutor, and the FBI, she insisted, all rejected his story. “The people of Maine shouldn’t buy it either,” she added. When Robinson asked about her interactions with investigators during the earlier probe, Collins said none of her staffers or she herself were ever targets of the investigation. Instead, she said, they cooperated fully with the FBI, provided documents as requested, and had nothing to hide. Her voice carried the weight of someone who believed she had been wrongly accused before and would not allow it to define her legacy.
After the heated opening exchange, Graham Pollard redirected the conversation to a piece of legislation that had been generating interest among viewers: the SAVE Act. The question about election security gave Collins a welcome pivot away from the defensive tone of the first several minutes. She acknowledged that the measure could come up in the Senate as soon as the following week, after the chamber finished work on a data center bill and a bill dealing with name, image, and likeness rights for college athletes. Collins admitted that she did not view the NIL bill as being as important as some other matters, but she said she expected the data center bill to be completed next week, after which the House version of the SAVE Act might move to the floor. “It’s really important that only American citizens vote in American elections, and those are provisions of the SAVE Act that I do support,” she said. She stressed that requiring people to show evidence of citizenship when they register to vote simply made sense, and she noted that she had supported that principle for some time. The bill had already passed the House, and she made clear that she would support the House version if it came before the Senate. For Collins, the issue seemed to offer a return to familiar ground—legislation and process, not personal allegations. It also allowed her to talk about a policy priority that resonates with conservative voters, a useful counterweight to the earlier accusations that had put her on the defensive. The shift in her demeanor was noticeable; she appeared more comfortable discussing the mechanics of voting laws and the legislative calendar than the murky world of federal contracting and campaign donations.
The conversation then turned to a subject that has become increasingly urgent in Maine: Chinese organized crime operating in rural parts of the state. Robinson noted that Collins had written letters to federal drug enforcement agencies before he had even started investigating the story, and he asked what more could be done to combat the problem. Collins did not hesitate in calling it a “huge problem,” and she traced her own awareness of it to a former staffer who lived down the street from a marijuana grow house. The staffer could smell the marijuana being processed, and the house eventually burned down. That incident, Collins said, opened her eyes to a network of illegal grow operations that were spreading across rural Maine. She said she had reached out to sheriffs, who had done outstanding work trying to close the houses down, and she had pressed the issue at the federal level with the FBI, the DEA, the IRS, and multiple attorneys general. She expressed optimism that progress was finally being made with the appointment of Andrew Benson as U.S. attorney, someone she said takes the issue seriously and understands that these are transnational criminal organizations from China. Collins described a pattern of destruction: houses in rural Maine being wrecked, marijuana grown illegally and in violation of state rules, and a system that had too often punished offenders with little more than a slap on the wrist in state courts. Charging these cases in federal courts, she argued, would be far more effective. Her private briefings and public hearing testimony had convinced her that the problem goes far beyond illegal marijuana growing, encompassing money laundering, mortgage fraud, and very likely human trafficking. It was a sobering picture, and Collins painted it clearly, acknowledging that her state was being exploited by sophisticated criminal networks.
Robinson followed up with a specific case that illustrated the broader security concerns along Maine’s northern border. Roughly two weeks earlier, a U.S. Customs agent in Calais, Maine, had been arrested in an FBI sting. The agent was accused of cracking open Department of Homeland Security computers and installing custom hard drives and memory cards. Court records had not yet specified whether he was acting as a spy for the Chinese Communist Party or as a foreign agent, but Robinson asked Collins whether she was concerned that this might just be the tip of the iceberg. He noted that Maine’s proximity to Canada and its large, understaffed border could allow foreign actors to slip drugs, weapons, and even military personnel into the country. Collins acknowledged that she had been concerned for some time that the northern border does not receive the same level of attention as the southern border. Studies, she said, had confirmed that the northern border is very porous. She also offered a surprising statistic: the top two states for illegal marijuana grow houses appear to be Maine and Oklahoma, a pairing she said she would not have guessed. When it came to the arrest of the border patrol agent, Collins chose her words carefully. She called the arrest very troubling, noting that the allegations suggested he had infiltrated a number of computer systems. But she also cautioned that these remained allegations, and she said she had not yet been fully briefed on the details. Still, she made clear that this was something federal officials would have to watch very closely. The episode, combined with the broader issue of Chinese organized crime, left an impression of a state on the front lines of a quiet but serious national security crisis.
By the end of the interview, a fuller portrait of Susan Collins had emerged. She had spent the first portion of the conversation defending her integrity against what she saw as an unfair and politically motivated attack, invoking her long career, her reputation, and the previous investigations that had cleared her and her staff. She had dismissed the central witness against her as a convicted felon with every reason to lie, and she had challenged the media outlet’s credibility by pointing to its billionaire funders and the timing of its report. But she had also used the platform to address policy matters she clearly cared about: the SAVE Act and the principle that only American citizens should vote in American elections, the fight against Chinese organized crime in rural Maine, and the need to secure the northern border. Her answers were a mix of indignation and determination, sometimes defensive, sometimes passionate. She sounded like a senator who felt under siege but was unwilling to retreat into silence. Whether the ProPublica report gains traction among voters may depend on evidence that Collins maintained simply does not exist. But at least in this interview, she made her case with conviction, pointing to her record of cooperation with investigators and her belief that the truth was on her side. She left no doubt that she considered the accusations not just false, but an insult to a career she has built on trust, service, and integrity—and she made it equally clear that she was not about to let a story told by a convicted fraudster define her.