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Sept. 23, 2026 1:44 PM PT

PORTLAND, Maine — Maine Democrats on Wednesday assailed U.S. Sen. Susan Collins over a news report that the FBI investigated how much she knew about illegal campaign contributions that sent one of her donors to prison.

The ProPublica report, published Tuesday, states that the FBI in 2024 planned to launch an investigation into Collins’ dealings with Navatek, a Hawaii defense contractor and donor to her campaign. The investigation, which focused on an alleged pay-to-play scheme, failed to commence after President Trump took office after winning the election, according to ProPublica.

The report arrived six weeks before an election in which Collins is seeking a sixth term against Democrat Troy Jackson. Democrats have targeted the seat, in a state that Trump lost in 2024, as the party tries to win control of the Senate, making it one of the most competitive races on the November ballot.

Collins on Tuesday called the entire story “absolutely outrageous” and said it is frustrating and unfair to have such claims made against her so close to the election. Her campaign manager, Steve Abbott, also said Wednesday that the allegation that “we charge people to have meetings” is categorically false and Collins accepting campaign cash for contracts “did not happen.”

Jackson called the allegation “corruption of the highest order.” He was not present Wednesday when a group of Maine Democrats held a news conference near Collins’ Portland office, calling the allegations a betrayal of trust.

“I cannot stress enough here today the seriousness of these allegations. Maine people deserve clear and real answers from Susan Collins right now,” Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson said.

FBI says allegations were already investigated

The ProPublica report stated that the head of a Collins super PAC met with executives from defense contractor Navatek in 2019 and asked them for a $500,000 campaign donation. The company’s chief executive, Martin Kao, sent an initial $150,000 donation using a shell company, the report stated. ProPublica reported that it reviewed an internal company email from Kao in which the CEO later told Navatek executives that Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in Navy contracts.

Kao and two other Navatek executives were later indicted on charges of funneling illegal donations to Collins. Kao sought to reduce his prison sentence by revealing to the FBI the full scope of illegal contributions to Collins, ProPublica reported.

Collins said Kao is “a liar” whose story is untrustworthy.

“He has been twice convicted in separate federal court cases. He’s been convicted of money laundering. He’s been convicted of bank fraud. He has been convicted of false submissions to the FEC. He’s being convicted of a lot of crimes,” she said.

An FBI spokesperson said in a statement that the allegations “had already been investigated by the FBI years ago and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign. Any suggestion otherwise is totally false.”

The ProPublica article also states that Trump’s return to the White House left the Justice Department unable to perform the investigation.

Corruption investigations have decreased in Trump’s second term

The number of FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors specializing in corruption investigations plummeted in the first months of the Trump administration. The Justice Department, for instance, decimated its elite Public Integrity Section in early 2025 and the FBI disbanded a white-collar fraud and public corruption squad based out of its Washington field office.

The administration has also fired numerous law enforcement officials who participated in investigations into Trump, including over his efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election he lost and his retention of classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.

An email seeking comment was sent to the Justice Department on Wednesday.

Collins said she first learned of the company through the University of Maine because of the research the Navy found to be valuable, which had to do with 3D printing for production.

She said the Justice Department has already reviewed the matter.

“I’m telling you this is completely false,” Collins said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune dismissed the idea that Collins would be implicated in a pay-to-play scheme, calling the allegations “a political hit job.”

Whittle and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. Mascaro reported from Washington. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Eric Tucker in Washington and Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.

LILA Moss stole the show at H&M’s London Fashion Week show.

The star proved the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree as she followed in her mum Kate Moss’s heeled footsteps and took to the runway.

I’m told despite being one of the biggest names at the event and being the daughter of an industry legend, Lila refused to have any special treatment.

In fact, sources tell me Lila has secretly been battling vile treatment at shows over the past year due to her nepo-baby status.

She’s told pals how she has been given “icy treatment or totally ignored” behind the scenes as she battles to carve out a career in her own right.

A source said: “Lila was booked in the standard way, just like all the other models.

MOSSY ON ROCKS

Lila Moss stuns in sexy swimsuit as she proudly shows off diabetes monitor

MOSS-T BEAUTIFUL

Lila Moss, 23, looks just like Kate as she strips to underwear for snaps

“She didn’t ask for any special treatment due to her status—in fact, it’s the opposite.

“Over the past year, she’s confided in pals that many other models give her the cold shoulder or totally ignore her altogether.

“She’s not said these words, but essentially it’s jealousy—people judge her and brand her a nepo before they have even met her.

“Yes, being Kate’s daughter has opened a lot of doors, but Lila wants to be successful in her own right.

“There have been many times over the years where backstage she is left all on her own.”

Lila is the daughter of Kate Moss and magazine editor Jefferson Hack.

In 2018, she was snapped up by Marc Jacobs to front his Marc Jacobs Beauty range.

In 2021, she made her Fashion Week debut by walking for Miu Miu at Paris Fashion Week.

Speaking in 2022, Lila admitted her mum tried to put her off modelling.

She told British Vogue: “My mum always put me off.

“She was always like, ‘If you wanna do it, you can, but I wouldn’t recommend it’.

“When I was younger, she was scared that I’d fall into the same trap, I think.”

Kate has previously spoken candidly about the pressures of being a model.

She told Vanity Fair in 2012: “Nobody takes care of you mentally.

“There’s a massive pressure to do what you have to do.”

IT’S totally transparent how Baywatch actress Brooks Nader turns heads as she has a night out in a see-through dress.

The 29-year-old finished off the look with black high heels.

The US star, who made her name as a swimsuit model, was in New York at an event as part of Fashion Week in the city.

Brooks, who also features with her sisters in reality show Love Thy Nader, is a lifeguard in the reboot of TV series Baywatch, which will air next year.

Earlier in the week, The Sun also revealed the star attended a CDFA event to kick off New York Fashion Week, and was spotted in the glam outfit on the night out.

Brooks opted to wear a sheer black dress made entirely from lace, which hugged her curves.

SHEER DELIGHT

Brooks Nader stuns in risky outfit as she goes braless in see-through top

LACY LADY

Brooks Nader stuns as she flashes her boobs and bum in see-through lace outfit

Her matching underwear cheekily peeked through under the fabric.

Brooks also ditched her bra for the occasion, baring her figure for all to see.

She finished the look off with a pair of black high heels and left her hair loosely flowing in a subtle wave down her back.

This isn’t the first time Brooks has been bold with her fashion choices.

Less than two weeks ago she ditched her underwear again in France in a sexy white gown.

Brooks wore a white, T-shirt cut backless dress in the City of Love, which featured high cutouts on the sides of her hips and bum.

A large bruise was visible on her left buttock.

London, United Kingdom – In a wheat field near High Wycombe in the rolling English countryside, Alex Nelms watched the harvest on his farm die in a matter of days.

His crop had looked strong until the first heatwave came in May, when temperatures surpassed 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) just as his milling wheat entered its grain-fill phase, the critical weeks when the plant fattens its kernels.

“It just killed everything stone dead,” he told Al Jazeera. “Everything was finished really early, and when we were sort of full of optimism and hope, it was scuppered almost overnight.”

Nelms farms just over 2,000 acres (809 hectares) of arable land in south Buckinghamshire, on a business his grandparents founded in 1955. His uncle, who has worked the farm for more than 40 years, has just suffered the worst harvest of his career.

Last month, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said almost three-quarters of England, 71.3 percent, remained in drought. Rainfall in August reached just 34 percent of what would normally be expected by that point in the month, Defra said, and reservoir levels were 18.2 percentage points below where they should be for the time of year.

“We’re totally reliant on Mother Nature,” Nelms said, and nature did not deliver this year.

After a historically dry spring and a run of summer heatwaves, the farm is down roughly 1,000 tonnes on its average harvest, a shortfall of some $270,000 in revenue.

The farm, tucked in the Chiltern Hills, a steep, long ridge of white limestone rock, has no irrigation and never will.

“That has serious knock-on effects on our cash flow,” he said. A third consecutive difficult year would mean hard conversations with his bank and landlord, and farming to minimise risk rather than maximise output, “consequently, probably producing less food”.

‘Financial crisis point’

The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) says farmers are at a “financial crisis point” after the worst drought in 50 years, with historically low harvests, stunted grass growth, rising fuel and fertiliser costs, and a severe outbreak of bluetongue disease in livestock.

The union puts the gross production value loss of wheat at approximately $499m and the cost of replacing a shortfall in forage at roughly $45m.

NFU president Tom Bradshaw has said farmers now lack “breathing space” and are “increasingly exposed to geopolitical shocks, as well as repeated weather extremes, animal disease and global wars”.

He believes action is needed now to ensure the future of British farming “and enable the next generation to keep producing the nation’s food”.

To manage the risk, Nelms is diversifying, planting oilseed rape again on about 350 acres (142 hectares) for the first time in 20 years. He says that the crop’s usual insecticide protection, neonicotinoid seed treatments, is now banned, leaving it exposed to cabbage stem flea beetle and to game birds that can “absolutely nibble, eat, and destroy a crop”.

Growing it also means breaking a continuous wheat rotation that has kept a soil-borne disease called “Take-all”.

Tax allowances would make investing in grain storage and diversified income worthwhile, he said, as well as government-backed bridging loans, modelled on COVID-era support, to survive a bad year without permanent damage.

It is the kind of relief the NFU is pressing the government to provide nationally.

The union wants an interest-free “Keep Britain Growing” loan tied to drought losses, help covering the cost of disposing of livestock lost to bluetongue, faster planning permission for on-farm reservoirs, and clearer rules letting farmers access water as soon as levels allow, echoing Nelms’s case for storage on his farm.

“Drought conditions will continue to worsen until we receive sustained rainfall across the country and we still all have a role to play in conserving precious water supplies,” according to Philip Duffy, the Environment Agency’s chief executive, in a statement shared by Defra.

The Environment Agency has applied for a drought order to restrict abstraction from the River Severn, and 10 water companies, serving 30 million customers, now have restrictions in place.

“A few days or even weeks of wetter weather cannot reverse the impacts of several months of exceptionally dry conditions,” added Duffy.

Defra noted that the first meaningful rains since June have fallen but they have been patchy, so reservoirs and groundwater are still declining even as a handful of rivers see brief upticks in flow.

Despite the losses, Nelms is hopeful about farmers pulling together – sharing labour, machinery and market routes. He points to the Central Chiltern Farmer Cluster, where growers meet to talk through their problems and find solutions together.

“We’re working together, not competing with each other,” he said.

For a farm like Nelms’s, with no irrigation and no water in reserve, that patchiness is the problem. Soil parched from months without rain needs to absorb sustained rainfall before groundwater can even begin to recharge, let alone refill the reservoirs a future harvest might depend on.

“Our climate has changed,” Water Minister Emma Hardy, who chairs the National Drought Group, said late last month, “and we will continue to take all action necessary.”