The FBI’s Navatek federal contracts bribery probe ended in 2025 after Trump returned to office, stopping an inquiry that had examined whether Lindsey Graham and Jim Clyburn were tied to a bribery scheme involving the Hawaiian naval defense firm. The case had reached the point where agents told superiors it could expand to include lawmakers, but the public corruption team working it was removed first.
Martin Kao’s FBI account
Martin Kao told the FBI he was exchanging campaign donations and gifts for millions of dollars in naval contracts, and he later told federal agents that Navatek’s business model relied solely on bribing public officials in exchange for government contracts. He was arrested for campaign finance violations in September 2020 after that account had already put the case on the agency’s internal track.
ProPublica reported that Kao said Graham made a deal to give Navatek a $10 million government contract in exchange for $100,000 in campaign donations. He also said Graham charged $40,000 for the meeting. In a separate episode, Graham met with Navatek lobbyists at Charlie Palmer Steak in Washington, D.C., in March 2020.
Jim Clyburn and Joe Wilson
Kao also said Clyburn met with Navatek leaders and asked them to match Graham’s $100,000 campaign gift in exchange for political favors. Joe Wilson was also said to have made cash-for-contract dealings with Navatek, widening the scope of the inquiry beyond one lawmaker or one meeting.
Clyburn, Graham, and Wilson’s offices denied Kao’s quid pro quo allegations. The denial left the agents with a case built on Kao’s account, his later confession to federal agents, and the paper trail around campaign money and defense contracts.
Susan Collins and the 2019 meeting
The broader Navatek matter also included Susan Collins. After a 2019 meeting in Washington, D.C., Martin Kao and Susan Collins were linked to a sequence in which Collins’s PAC received $150,000 from Kao, and two months later Kao informed Navatek that Collins committed to giving it $32 million in naval contracts.
Kao’s political donations also reached Joe Biden, Dick Durbin, Jeanne Shaheen, and Tulsi Gabbard. That mix of names is what made the probe larger than a single contract dispute: it pointed to a pattern that crossed party lines and touched a defense contractor, campaign money, and congressional access.
The practical result is that the team that had been building the case is gone, so the FBI cannot continue that investigation on the same track. Whether a new case can still be filed after the team’s removal is not answered by the record available here.
