In 2024 the FBI launched an ambitious public-corruption inquiry centered on a series of meetings between Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Martin Kao, chief executive of the Hawaiian defense firm Navatek. The case began with a request for a half-million-dollar contribution to the Collins super PAC, a request allegedly made during a coffee-shop meeting at the Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C. According to court-recorded emails, Navatek’s CEO told the fundraiser that a large donation could be exchanged for a promise that the senator would help secure “tens of millions of dollars in additional federal funding.”
The Corner Bakery encounter and the money trail
Scott Reed, who ran the Collins super PAC, sat with three Navatek executives in late 2019. Reed was told that the company, which had already benefited from a multimillion-dollar Navy research contract in Maine, was “hungry for more government contracts in Maine.” To conceal the source of the cash, Navatek planned to route the money through a shell corporation. The CEO assured Reed that Collins would be kept informed about the origin of the funds, and in return the firm hoped to lock in $32 million in naval contracts – a figure later cited in an internal Navatek email reviewed by ProPublica.
Following that meeting, Navatek transferred an initial $150,000 to the super PAC via the shell entity. Two months later, internal correspondence indicated that Collins had pledged to help the company obtain the $32 million contract. In total, Navatek’s covert giving to politicians approached nearly $900,000 a sum the agency later linked to a broader network of lobbyists, congressional staffers and lawmakers.
The FBI’s investigation and its abrupt end
Agents interviewed Kao in early 2022, and a grand jury indicted him for illegal campaign contributions. During the interrogation, Kao provided a 50-page dossier naming dozens of officials allegedly involved in the cash-for-contracts scheme. He claimed that Navatek’s work for the Navy produced no usable products, a point confirmed by ProPublica’s review of the company’s research output.
By late 2024, FBI analysts had amassed enough evidence to propose a sweeping bribery probe that could engulf senior members of both parties. The plan included the possible deployment of undercover operatives to capture further quid-pro-quo exchanges. However, the investigation collapsed after Donald Trump’s return to the White House. The new administration purged the DOJ of agents and prosecutors linked to public-corruption cases, including the team handling Kao’s confession. A spokesperson for the FBI later reiterated that previous inquiries into Collins had “found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign,” while refusing to comment on the newly opened 2024 probe.
Navatek’s evolution from earmarks to a pay-to-play playbook
Founded in 1978 by engineer Steven Loui, Navatek originally thrived on the patronage of Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye, a master of earmarks who funneled federal dollars to local projects. After Inouye’s death in 2012 and the subsequent repeal of earmarking, Navatek’s CFO-turned-CEO Martin Kao reinvented the company’s strategy. He targeted members of the House and Senate appropriations committees, offering research-project partnerships with local universities as a veneer for large campaign donations.
According to the documents seized from Kao’s office, the firm kept detailed spreadsheets that matched specific lobbyists to individual members of Congress, effectively turning each lawmaker into a potential conduit for federal spending. The scheme relied on the opacity of the Pentagon’s multi-thousand-page budget, allowing “line items” to be inserted for Navatek without overt scrutiny. Kao told agents that both lobbyists and lawmakers understood these contributions as bribes essential to securing the company’s annual $40 million in government funding.
While Navatek’s internal emails and external testimonies paint a picture of systematic influence-peddling, the collapse of the FBI investigation leaves the allegations unresolved. The case illustrates how, even in the aftermath of earmark reforms, a well-orchestrated “pay-to-play” model can still shape the flow of defense money to contractors with political connections.
