BREAKING🚨 Trump's FBI fired the agent who was building a bribery case against members of Congress, claiming she had "weaponized" the Justice Department. Michelle Ball's actual work, the work that got her removed in October 2025, was the investigation into Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Her partner on the corruption squad, Kevin Gounaud, was pushed out this year. Kash Patel took their anti-corruption unit apart agent by agent, and the congressional bribery investigation they had spent years assembling died with it. Months earlier the same department ordered prosecutors in Manhattan to drop the corruption case against Eric Adams, who had agreed to help with Trump's immigration crackdown. At least seven prosecutors quit rather than sign it. Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney, wrote that Adams "committed the crimes with which he was charged" and that his lawyers had "repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo." Judge Dale Ho said the dismissal "smacks of a bargain." The case Ball's unit never got to bring started in late 2019, when the chairman of Susan Collins' super PAC, Scott Reed, sat down with three executives from a Hawaiian defense contractor called Navatek at a Corner Bakery near the Capitol and asked for $500,000. Navatek's CEO, Martin Kao, wanted tens of millions in federal funding in return. Reed still chairs the Collins super PAC. Amy Abbott, who emailed Kao "We are so grateful for ALL the Kao support!", is the finance director of her 2026 campaign, as William Turton, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Molly Redden and Kirsten Berg first reported in ProPublica. Contractors are banned from donating. Kao routed $150,000 through a newly created shell LLC and emailed Reed first to explain how the concealment would work. "Very smart," Reed wrote back. "Thanks for doing this." Seven days after the check cleared, a Reed staffer asked a Navatek lobbyist for Kao's number: "Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him." Two months later Kao told his own executives: "Total of $32M will be supported." Kao told agents that before a 2019 fundraiser Collins said to him, "You've seen me deliver." Collins' office "vigorously" denies bribery and pay-to-play, calls Kao's claims "outlandish," and says the campaign was never a target. Kao pleaded guilty, got 87 months, and handed agents a 50-page document naming dozens of lobbyists, staffers and lawmakers he said traded cash for contracts. The one new investigation Ball got approved before her firing centered on a steak dinner Kao had with Lindsey Graham. If you appreciate my posts, it would mean the world if you followed my page. Thank you for being here.