Of all the politicians Navatek courted under Kao’s leadership, [Senator Dusan] Collins was its most important patron,” the investigative outlet reported. “The senator’s office steered government contracts worth millions toward the company while her campaign was pumping Kao and his network for donations, according to emails seen by ProPublica. Sometimes they cut checks within 24 hours of the annual defense spending bill, which funds military contracts, clearing a key Senate hurdle.”
When are all of these old people going to pass the torch? Aren’t they rich enough that they can quit while they’re ahead instead of pulling a Feinstein or McConnell?
I think they have reached a level of corruption that they are afraid to hand off power as they could be persecuted for their crimes.
*prosecuted
Stephen King should be doing something about this! /s
This is business as usual, as proven again and again and again.
… and she can trade stocks, too
She must have pissed someone big off for us to even know about it. Super PACs can hide such machinations much easier, the fact that they barely bothered to cover their tracks shows how just absolutely routine this kind of arrangement is.
She will not be convicted of anything, at worst she’ll bow out of the race (and become a lobbyist for same industry).
- dumb comment by me
She’s a republican
She needs to go to fkn prison. Now. And everyone who has the power and obligation to put her there should be held accountable with prison time when they look the other way. Which they are guaranteed to do.
Didn’t SCOTUS pretty much rule that bribery isn’t bribery unless you use the proper incantation or something? This just looks like standard politics post-Citizens United.
Pretty much. They said that it’s not really bribery if you call it a tip.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, noted that criminalizing the acceptance of gratuities would raise federalism concerns since state and local governments “have the prerogative” to regulate their officials’ acceptance of gratuities. Disrupting those state and local governments’ “carefully calibrated policy decisions,” he wrote, would “significantly infringe on bedrock federalism principles.”
It’s just a tip, bro!
Just the tip, just to see how the corruption feels.
I mean, the fact that the pay for play took place at a meeting in 2019 and the other guy got sent to prison in 2022 but nothing ever happened to her makes it pretty clear no prosecutor was ever going to be allowed to even try going after her anyway
Looks like this was a PAC, not a Super PAC. Though even if it was the latter, they legally cannot organize with the campaign.
But all that means shit if the DoJ won’t do a thing about it.
I have yet to see the courts define what constitutes “organize with campaign” and I suspect they won’t try.
The courts will have to judge on a case by case basis and if you’re a Republican defendant then you can take it to the Supreme court for them to find you innocent, or slow walk the decision until after the election in which it all becomes all moot.
But if you’re a Democrat and make it to the Supreme court, they will rule against you swiftly via the shadow docket.
Democrat: organizing with campaign if you exist in the same zip code at any point GOP: organizing only if you crawl into the voting booth with candidate
Merrick Garland’s DOJ wouldn’t have done anything about it either. The Dem party leadership has historically been controlled opposition. This is what happens when conservatives run both parties. Bribes and concentration camps become normal.
Idgaf what those traitors call anything. It’s still objectively bribery.
Yes, if you’re a public servant you have to have someone stand proudly and say in a clear voice, “I’d like to give you a bribe, in fact I’d like a French tickler”. Then you have to say, “I accept your bribe”.
reveals for the first time the existence of an FBI investigation into possible bribery of members of Congress, including Collins, by the defense contractor Navatek, a probe that was shuttered after President Donald Trump took office for his second term.
Mueller Time energy to this story.
Like, Susan Collins doing crimes is no surprise. She’s had a long and tawdry history of saying “I could never support this horrible thing” in public, while holding her hand out behind her for Mitch McConnell to slide in a bribe. And the Pentagon being a wellspring of kickbacks and bribes should be a shock to nobody born more recently than yesterday.
But is anyone going to do anything? I’m not holding my breath. Maybe if they get Alvin Bragg on the case…
I’m sure she learned her lesson.
I’m sure she did. If you keep supporting Trump, he’ll keep letting you do crime.
More of this.
I love all those photos of her holding piles of documents and binders as if she’s ever going to fucking read any of that shit because she’s just waiting for her marching orders from Trump.
Howabout you not reelect her this time Maine
I think she has a very rocky road ahead. She was already getting side-eyed for Kavanaugh, then Platner and then Jackson took a spotlight to her many faults, then there was the ICE thing at her office in Biddeford, and now this. And those are just off the top of my head.
I absolutely love this for her. The next month and a half of her life is going to SUCK, and those pearls aren’t going to clutch themselves.
Basically what it comes to.
They keep doing this because Republicans never care to change a vote and non voters don’t care enough to do anything.
Complete semiannual financial audits for all elected politicians and their families.
They’re all corrupt, the pathway to power seems to require corruption.
No, they really are NOT all corrupt. Take, for example, Elizabeth Warren, the founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; or Ron Wyden, who has spent months chasing down Epstein’s money trail; or Sheldon Whitehouse, who has also worked hard on Epstein-related corruption; or Bernie Sanders who, if memory serves, doesn’t even take corporate cash at all. The list of good to great ones is actually pretty long; those are just off the top of my head.
Some of these folks are literal heroes, and really are doing all they can for their constituents and country.
But the ones that are corrupt now outnumber the ones that are not, and it’s up to us as citizens to clean it up somehow: Washington can no longer clean itself.
If you let yourself get cynical and call them all corrupt, it’s just a dishonest way of exempting yourself from the fight, calling it all hopeless so you can walk away. Don’t.
How would any of us be able to actually know? So many are proven to be corrupt, there is zero way to build confidence in any of them. I’m certainly not willing or capable of doing an investigation into each politician to build that confidence. How can any of us reasonably trust any politician at this point? Treat them all like they’re corrupt, i say!
Lol, no. You make me want to vote even more than I already want to vote, and that’s a high bar.
Also, I make it a point to know my reps: on the federal level I have two state senators and one congressperson. Doing a superficial look into the history of three individuals is NOT a high bar. Wikipedia’s a one stop shop for the time limited: go to the section labeled “controversy” if there is one, and you’re done.
Just so we’re clear. It looks like you really just don’t want anything to change.
ballotpedia is a very good resource as well
You’re not finding corruption with a superficial look though so…
If you’re over twelve years old you know that corruption does not exist in a vacuum, and that someone never just stops at corruption: there are always other problems.
I don’t have to find corruption, specifically, to know whether there are character problems with party, history, personal life, or all of the above.
Just like I already know these are just excuses on your part. You don’t even look. You insist it’s too hard.
For whatever reason, you want other people to check out of voting, or doing even the first tiny bit of due diligence, and it’s not working on me.
How is it you live in the US, you’re posting in a US politics community, but you have zero idea how few reps you actually have at the federal level? Your facade is slipping.
Oh wait, going by your profile you’re magically Canadian too, posting in the middle of the US night. There is NO “us.” There is NO “we.” You’re just another fraud jumping into the fray before the US midterms. Thought as much.
When I go vote, I’m going to laugh at all the trolls who tried this shit on me, lol.
Mind your own country, wherever it is. I don’t give a shit what you have to say or what you think: this is not your country, these are not your elections, and you don’t find corruption because you can’t be bothered to look.
Typical American.
