AUGUSTA — A new report in ProPublica alleging that Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ office funneled government contracts to a major donor is being highlighted by Democrats eager to defeat her in November.

The story published Tuesday alleges that in one instance, a defense contractor donated $150,000 to a Collins super PAC through a shell company to get around campaign finance laws. Two months later, company executives were told they would get a $32 million contract, ProPublica reported.

Within hours of the story breaking, Democrats pointed to the reporting as evidence Collins should not be reelected in November.

“This is corruption of the highest order,” Troy Jackson, the Democrat opposing her in November, said in a statement. “We deserve answers about every contract and every conversation that Collins and her team facilitated on the backs of taxpayers. The jig is up.” 

On social media, Collins’ Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Clark called the allegations “categorically false.”

“There have never been any allegations of wrongdoing by the Collins for Senator campaign, and the campaign was never the target of the FBI investigation,” she wrote.

Collins is seeking a sixth term to the Senate and is locked in a tight battle with Jackson, a former Maine Senate president. The race is nationally significant as Republicans look to maintain control of the chamber and Democrats hope to flip it.

And while the story is breaking just six weeks before Election Day, it’s been in the works for nearly a year, said William Turton, investigative reporter and the lead writer of the ProPublica story. 

It all started when the team wanted to explore the impacts of President Donald Trump’s decision to clean house at the FBI and the Department of Justice in 2024.

During the investigation, ProPublica found that a defense contractor named Martin Kao told the FBI that members of Congress were engaged in what he described as a “pay for play operation.”

“He said that Susan Collins was their most important patron and that he exchanged campaign contributions in exchange for government contracts,” Turton said.

He said the FBI took Kao seriously, even though he had already been indicted by a grand jury for fraud and other charges. Kao was later sentenced to more than seven years in prison. 

Clark, the Collins’ staffer, also referred to Kao’s criminal record in her response to the story, saying that while he waited to be sentenced “he began making outlandish charges about the Collins office, deflecting blame from himself and placing it on Senator Collins.”

She said the allegations were investigated by the Biden Administration, the FBI and the DOJ.

“These issues were resolved in 2021, and the FBI has not contacted us about Martin Kao since then,” she wrote.

In his statement following the story’s release on Tuesday, Jackson said President Donald Trump helped Collins avoid scrutiny by covering up the probe. 

But while the Jackson campaign and the Maine Democratic Party are drawing a straight line from Trump to the Collins investigation, Turton said the ProPublica reporting does not back up that theory.

He said one of the agents pushed out worked on special counsel investigations into Trump, as well as the Collins case.

“There’s no evidence and there’s nothing that leads us to believe that it was directly connected to this Collins case,” he said. “It just happens to be a casualty.”

Turton described Kao as having “serious credibility issues” but said that ProPublica was able to corroborate that Kao worked with lobbyists to make donations while expecting government contracts in return. 

The investigative news outlet plans more stories in the future as it continues to examine the 50-page document Kao sent to federal investigators that names those he says helped him cash in as CEO of a company called Navatek.

“This company had a strategy of targeting members of Congress who were on the Appropriations Committee who could steer contracts to the company,” he said. “And so Collins was an extremely important member of their strategy and someone they spent a lot of time cultivating and donating to.”