Senator Susan Collins called to give accountability for fraud accusations that were buried by Trump's justice department- WWWTP?

It’s Maine’s turn to be concerned about Susan Collins | Editorial
The senator’s complacent response to open allegations of bribery sends voters a very clear and disrespectful message.

Echo editorial board opinion published in the Maine Sunday Telegram.

The words “fraud, waste and abuse” have formed part of a popular Republican Party slogan in recent years. The party’s most prominent figures obsess publicly about the ferreting out of wrongdoing they insist is rampant in government, at the federal level as well as here in Maine.

Against this intolerant backdrop, one might think that last week’s reporting by ProPublica on the killing off, in 2025, of a federal investigation into allegations of bribery by Sen. Susan Collins and staff would be met with a degree of solemnity if not humility. Think again.

The Collins campaign’s emphasis on the events taking place “seven years ago” cynically attempts to detract from the crux of the story, which hinges on the collapse of the investigation — reportedly active until the beginning of last year — due to a newly insufficiently staffed and uninterested FBI.

This editorial board isn’t about to make fun or light of the name of the made-up LLC used on the scan of the $150,000 check presented by ProPublica (“the Society of Young Women Scientist [sic] and Engineers”) which sought to exploit the white-hot cause of women in STEM.

Nor are we going to attempt to adjudicate on what the emails between Kao and political operative Scott Reed suggest or reveal.

In a functioning and properly resourced government, that’s a job that falls squarely to the Department of Justice. It’s a process that, once commenced, ought to have been followed to its logical administrative and legal end.

So let’s keep the focus on the demise of the probe and the conditions that led to its abandonment. Whether or not there are 3D-printed vessels to show for this tortured bit of negotiating, as Collins’ staffers were at pains to highlight with flashcards at a Portland press conference last week, becomes irrelevant in that light.

In the absence of anything approaching law enforcement as usual — an expectation reasonably held by the public, a basic check on congressional power — it’s audacious to insist on innocence and stoke conspiratorial lines of thinking by reaching for terms like “partisan hit job.”

Collins was quick to set the mood, labeling the exhaustive and level reporting a “a partisan hit job” and questioning why “anyone would take the word of a felon who’s been convicted twice” and “a convicted liar.”  (OMG this is beyond ludicrous❗)

That this particular felon — a Hawaii-based military contracting executive named Michael Kao — was found guilty of money laundering and fraud would seem to some to increase his credibility on such matters. For many of the claims made by Kao, the reporting referred to corresponding emails and other materials.

“Shame on ProPublica,” Collins told the Wall Street Journal, having said she was “offended” by the reporting — “so offensive” and “disgraceful.”

It is extremely disappointing to watch Collins and members of her staff move to immediately discredit a thorough and fair piece of investigative journalism on political and personal grounds.

The Trump administration has wailed about fraud while studiously dismantling the apparatus that’s in place to catch it. Borrowing straight from ProPublica: “Trump’s Justice Department no longer takes on public corruption in any meaningful fashion, former officials said. The investigation sparked by Kao’s revelations is dead. And the government is no longer talking to an informant who had offered a road map to corruption in Congress.”

This is just one of many unsettling paradoxes of this second presidential term.

Voters are bothered by this appearance of wrongdoing — it would be hard not to be. To be satisfied that this is best we can do, a voter would need to be disillusioned with the executive branch to the point of defeat.

There’s a world in which Sen. Collins, her staffers and supporters could confidently and respectfully acknowledge that widespread disquiet. That hasn’t happened. We’re not at all hopeful that it will.