Thread by @CollinsWatch

Easy to loose the forest from the trees with this stuff, so here's a quick thread/timeline on the relationship between Susan Collins and Martin Kao, her biggest contributor to her 2020 campaign, who plead guilty of illegal donations to Collins yesterday. #mepolitics 1/X

1. Kao and his wife give the maximum legal contribution to Susan Collins campaign (early 2019)

2. Susan Collins helps Kao's company win an $8,000,000 contract with the Navy and joins him at a press event to celebrate (August 2019) #mepolitics 2/X

3. Kao writes to Susan Collins campaign and asks what more he can do to help (September 2019)

4. The campaign notes that he's given the maximum and so encourages him to get friends or family to contribute (September 16, 2019) #mepolitics 3/X

5. Later that day Kao writes the campaign and says to expect two more maximum ($5,600) donations from two other people his company. HOURS LATER he writes again to say that that the contributions will come from two TOTALLY DIFFERENT PEOPLE. [um, hello?] #mepolitics 4/X

6. In Feb 2020 @CivilBeat ties a shady $150K donation to Susan Collins SuperPAC to Kao and notes that a slew of maxed-out contribs that seem tied to Kao came in to Collins from people w/ very similar names ON THE SAME DAY. [no, seriously] #mepolitics 5/X civilbeat.org/2020/03/this-h…

7. In early February 2020 the @CivilBeat story and related digging around Kao-related contributions are tweeted about and talked about widely in #mepolitics 6/X

https://twitter.com/CollinsWatch/status/1225861281246273539

8. A year later (!!) in Feb 2021 when a search warrant for Kao becomes public -- full of the same facts that had been unearthed a year earlier -- Team Collins says: "The Collins for Senator Campaign had absolutely no knowledge of anything alleged in the warrant." #mepolitics 7/7