{"id":2668245,"date":"2026-09-23T08:46:02","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T12:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaigndiscredited-activists-at-propublica-cite-other-discredited-activists-to-concoct-susan-collins-hit-piece\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T08:51:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T12:51:28","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaigndiscredited-activists-at-propublica-cite-other-discredited-activists-to-concoct-susan-collins-hit-piece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaigndiscredited-activists-at-propublica-cite-other-discredited-activists-to-concoct-susan-collins-hit-piece\/","title":{"rendered":"Discredited Activists At ProPublica Concoct Susan Collins Hit Piece"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaigndiscredited-activists-at-propublica-cite-other-discredited-activists-to-concoct-susan-collins-hit-piece%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2668245&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>ProPublica published a critical article accusing Senator Susan Collins of involvement in a pay-to-play scheme related to her 2020 Senate campaign, suggesting a bribe exchange with defense contractor Navatek through campaign donations. These claims were investigated by the FBI and denied by Collins\u2019 team, who stated her campaign was not a target of any probe. The story relies heavily on the testimony of Martin Kao, a felon with credibility issues, and Kevin Gounaud, a discredited former FBI agent, both of whom have questionable motives and a history of targeting conservatives. ProPublica\u2019s portrayal is further biased by its long-standing, evidence of anti-Republican reporting, including false allegations against Justice Clarence Thomas and other misleading stories.The article questions the objectivity and integrity of ProPublica\u2019s reporting, suggesting it is indeed part of a political effort influenced by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nolte-heres-why-cnn-continues-to-release-hoax-polls\/\" title=\"Nolte: Here&#039;s Why CNN Continues to Release Hoax Polls\">left-wing biases<\/a>, especially given the outlet\u2019s history of sensationalism and unreliable sourcing.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/cnn-humiliated-forced-to-issue-a-correction-on-its-own-fact-check-of-trump\/\" title=\"CNN Humiliated, Forced to Issue a Correction on Its Own Fact Check of Trump\">left-wing propaganda operation<\/a> better known as ProPublica released a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/fbi-susan-collins-navatek-campaign-donations-investigation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">hit piece<\/a> targeting Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, on Tuesday, alleging she was involved in a pay-to-play scheme and that the Trump administration helped shut down the investigation. <\/p>\n<p>To make the claim that has been denied by both Collins\u2019 team and the FBI, ProPublica enlists discredited former FBI agent Kevin Gounaud, who sought to use lawfare to take down Elon Musk, and the testimony of Martin Kao, the man in jail for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/government-contractors-charged-with-making-illegal-donations-to-pro-susan-collins-super-pac\/\" title=\"...ors Charged With Making Illegal Donations To Pro-... Super PAC\">making illegal campaign contributions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>ProPublica suggested in its latest anti-Republican hit piece that Collins and her 2020 Senate campaign were involved in a pay-to-play bribery scheme. According to ProPublica, a staffer for Collins\u2019 campaign met with Navatek CEO Martin Kao, because the company wanted government contracts in Maine. Navatek is a Hawaiian defense contractor. In exchange for government contract, so goes the ProPublica story, Kao would make donations to Collins\u2019 campaign through a shell company. But Kao allegedly \u201cwanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Notably, the allegations were investigated by the Biden FBI and nobody from Collins\u2019 team was charged. Collins\u2019 team also denied claims that Collins\u2019 campaign was ever a subject of the inquiry. Annie Clark, Deputy Chief of Staff for Collins, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/annieclark25\/status\/2102418037857022067?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">saying<\/a> Collins\u2019 campaign \u201cwas never the target of the FBI investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Clark also pointed out that rather than take the word of the FBI, the story\u2019s central framing relies on a man who \u201cpled guilty to five counts of money laundering, three counts of wire fraud, one count of bank fraud, and making false submissions to the FEC. As Martin Kao was awaiting sentencing, he began making outlandish charges about the Collins office, deflecting blame from himself and placing it on Senator Collins, including alleging that our office required contributions before taking meetings and engaged in extortion, pay for play, and bribery.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In other words, at the heart of this story are allegations about a pay-for-play scheme made by an unreliable narrator, Kao. ProPublica itself hints that Kao could be unreliable, writing that \u201cFacing years in prison, Kao hoped to do less time by revealing the entire scheme\u201d and that \u201cKao had credibility issues. He was now a felon trying to avoid a lengthy prison sentence.\u201d Nonetheless, ProPublica dedicated an entire story that began by trusting this unreliable narrator. To bolster their story, ProPublica relies on Kevin Gounaud, a former FBI agent. Gounaud and his fellow FBI agent Michelle Ball are described by ProPublica as \u201cexperienced agents in the FBI\u2019s elite anti-corruption unit\u201d with Gounaud specifically having \u201cworked on elaborate undercover operations.\u201d The duo were trying to get to the bottom of Martin Kao and Navatek\u2019s lobbying operation. The agents \u201czeroed in\u201d on Collins despite Kao allegedly having involvement with \u201cmore than a dozen members of Congress and their staff,\u201d according to ProPublica.<\/p>\n<p>That Gounaud and Ball reportedly \u201czeroed in\u201d on the Republican senator <em>should<\/em> raise questions about possible bias or political motives, but for ProPublica, that\u2019s standard operating procedure.<\/p>\n<p>According to ProPublica, Gounaud and Ball\u2019s efforts to nail Collins and the alleged bribery scheme were halted when the agents \u201cbecame casualties of Trump\u2019s retribution campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Gounaud was not some honest, neutral broker trying to fix obvious corruption in the nation\u2019s capital who became a victim of \u201cTrump\u2019s retribution campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gounaud spent weeks fighting to be assigned to Crossfire Hurricane, the code name for the FBI\u2019s spying on the Trump campaign, in 2017. After Gounaud\u2019s totally objective and neutral probe into a nothingburger targeting Collins was ended, Gounaud\u2019s quest for justice led him to coincidentally targeting yet <em>another<\/em> conservative \u2014 Elon Musk. <\/p>\n<p>Gounaud emailed a supervisor in February of 2025 recommending a criminal investigation of Musk over Musk\u2019s plans to have federal employees report on five things they did during the work week, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/worse-than-watergate-new-fbi-files-detail-agent-push-join-trump-probe-investigate-elon-musk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">emails<\/a> released by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.<\/p>\n<p>If ProPublica\u2019s two key subjects including a criminal and a man with a history of targeting Republicans was not enough to cast a shadow of doubt on the credibility and bias of this story and outlet, let\u2019s not forget the outlet has spent years running anti-Republican propaganda.<\/p>\n<p>Take for example ProPublica\u2019s long-running crusade against Justice Clarence Thomas. In one hit piece, ProPublica falsely claimed Thomas violated the law by not reporting vacations he took with longtime friend Harlan Crow. ProPublica <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/06\/30\/propublicas-smearing-of-conservative-justices-is-part-of-the-lefts-ploy-to-destroy-the-court\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">cited<\/a> left-wing \u201cjudicial ethics\u201d experts who, as pointed out in <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/12\/11\/propublica-plots-another-clarence-thomas-hit-piece-based-on-recycled-settled-claims\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">these pages<\/a> by Mark Paoletta, \u201care funded by the same left-wing billionaires funding ProPublica.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Further, ProPublica <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/propublica-recycles-old-clarence-thomas-news-trips-crow-judicial-conference-investigation-b9d23640\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">failed to mention<\/a> that the Judicial Conference of the United States, which is charged by law with implementing and enforcing the ethics law for the federal judiciary, had already considered these allegations and <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MarkPaoletta\/status\/1661495276773703687?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ruled<\/a> in 2012 that Thomas did not fail to disclose any required information regarding travel reimbursements, as Paoletta reported. <\/p>\n<p>In another case, ProPublica <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/what-propublicas-latest-hit-piece-gets-wrong-justice-clarence-thomas-supreme-court-accusation-misinformation-truth-yacht-70292e84\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">smeared<\/a> Thomas for not disclosing he used a $65 ticket to attend a University of Nebraska football game with his friends. The reporting threshold is $415. <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/06\/28\/propublicas-pulitzer-should-be-revoked\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Paoletta<\/a> reported he \u201clearned that ProPublica reporters were specifically told the price of the ticket by the Nebraska Athletic Office, but they deliberately did not put this fact in their piece. This would have destroyed their claim that Thomas violated the law by not disclosing these tickets. They are dishonest journalists.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>ProPublica also went after Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/12\/13\/leftist-propublicas-failed-hit-piece-just-made-pete-hegseth-defense-secretary\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">had prepared a story claiming<\/a> he was not accepted to West Point in 1999. They pulled their article before publication after Hegseth released his acceptance letter.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s no doubt that Congress and big corporations have a rather unsettling relationship. Whether that includes Collins is unclear, though it\u2019s likely that there are other members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican, who may be involved in questionable lobbying practices. <\/p>\n<p>But when the outlet that has a history of targeting Republicans \u201czeroes in\u201d on a conservative senator that leftists are desperately trying to beat these upcoming midterms and relies on the most flimsy of sourcing and claims, it\u2019s a good chance the article is a waste of time. <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ProPublica&#8217;s false claims against Sen. Collins lack credibility<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":2668246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/45656274601_4cd3a92e93_k.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14436,43116,10759],"class_list":["post-2668245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-activism","tag-political-bias","tag-propublica"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/45656274601_4cd3a92e93_k.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2668245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2668245"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2668245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2668249,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2668245\/revisions\/2668249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2668246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2668245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2668245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2668245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}