{"id":929,"date":"2026-10-29T14:59:51","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T18:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=929"},"modified":"2026-10-29T14:59:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T18:59:51","slug":"game-recognizes-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=929","title":{"rendered":"Game Recognizes Game"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

According to ProPublica<\/a> (a very important investigative journalism magazine that everyone should read), Trump’s Department of Justice intervened to rescue Susan Collins from an FBI investigation into what amounts to bribery.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

“But the company did have such a proposal: Navatek was hungry for more government contracts in Maine. If they cut a big check, the CEO told Reed, Navatek wanted Collins to guarantee tens of millions of dollars in additional federal funding.<\/em>

To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Navatek planned to funnel the donation through a shell company. The CEO wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from. Reed confirmed that she would, the executive said \u2014 and that Navatek would get its government contracts.<\/em>

After the Corner Bakery meeting, Navatek\u2019s CEO, Martin Kao, sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins super PAC using the shell company. Two months later, he told Navatek executives that Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts, according to an internal company email reviewed by ProPublica.<\/em>

Three years later, Kao holed up in a conference room to recount the Corner Bakery meeting to a group of four FBI agents and federal prosecutors. The FBI had seen through his shell company ruse, and in 2022 a grand jury indicted him for making illegal campaign contributions. No one working for Collins was charged.<\/em>“<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Trump’s DOJ no longer investigates corruption in any meaningful way, and is more likely to do what it did here when faced with real corruption: look the other way and drop investigations when it serves his purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, Trump’s DOJ files specious charges against political opponents, former aides who don’t spread his lies, or just people he doesn’t like. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to ProPublica (a very important investigative journalism magazine that everyone should read), Trump’s Department of Justice intervened to rescue Susan Collins from an FBI investigation into what amounts to bribery. “But the company did have such a proposal: Navatek was hungry for more government contracts in Maine. If they cut a big check, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[70,277],"tags":[387,382,389,384,388,386,385,280],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump","category-trump-corruption","tag-cassidy-hutchinson","tag-collins","tag-corruption","tag-doj","tag-ilhan-omar","tag-james-comey","tag-propublica","tag-trump"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":946,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions\/946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}