The FBI investigated claims that late Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. James Clyburn joined a bribery scheme with a defense contractor, a report the bureau rejects as false.

The Hill reported that ProPublica published a Tuesday account describing an early 2025 FBI inquiry into whether South Carolina’s late Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Rep. James Clyburn took part in a bribery scheme tied to Hawaiian naval defense contractor Navatek and federal work in their home state.

Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina also appears in the account. The lawmakers’ offices denied wrongdoing. An FBI spokesperson branded the ProPublica piece false and misleading. None of the three members of Congress were listed as subjects of the probe.

The claims rest heavily on statements from Navatek CEO Martin Kao, a convicted felon who spoke with agents while hoping to cut an 87-month prison sentence. That fact shapes every serious reading of the story.

A convict’s account drives the ProPublica narrative

Kao pleaded guilty in 2022 to making illegal campaign donations and running a loan fraud scheme. He later sat for FBI interviews and described what he called Navatek’s approach to winning federal work.

He told agents the company’s “business model consisted of bribing public officials in exchange for government contracts.” He also said Navatek’s research for the federal government “was often worthless.”

From federal detention in South Dakota, Kao offered ProPublica a final line that captured his posture.

"[It’s] corruption at its best. But I am the only one rotting in prison."

Self-serving statements from a man already locked up for campaign and fraud crimes are a weak foundation for a congressional scandal. ProPublica treated them as the spine of its report anyway.

South Carolina contracts and a March 2020 meeting

According to Kao’s account to the FBI, Graham met in March 2020 with two Navatek executives and a lobbyist and agreed to steer a $10 million government contract to the company in South Carolina. Kao further claimed Graham asked him to pledge $100,000 to the senator’s reelection campaign.

A final spending bill passed in December 2019 already included $9.5 million for Navatek work tied to the University of South Carolina. The company had recruited the university for a joint research project and aimed to press Congress for refreshed funding and two more projects that would have totaled $90 million.

Navatek, founded in 1979, had long leaned on former Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. After Inouye died in 2012, the firm needed a new patron in Washington. Kao’s own description of the outreach plan was blunt: open offices in lawmakers’ states, partner with local universities, and chase research money.

Similar approaches, Kao alleged, reached the offices of Clyburn and Wilson in early 2019. Wilson sat as a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, a detail that made the contractor’s interest obvious.

Graham’s office told ProPublica it added the $9.5 million at the request of Navatek and the university, that the Navy supported the research, and that the senator was not motivated by campaign money. That denial matters. So does the absence of charges against any of the three lawmakers.

Spokesmen reject quid-pro-quo claims

Taylor Reidy, Graham’s former communications director who later held the same post under Sen. Darline Graham, answered the allegations directly.

"[A]llegations of quid-pro-quo behavior or wrongdoing... are simply false."

Reidy called Kao’s remarks the “ravings of a convicted felon” and said the FBI never contacted the late senator’s office. Readers who followed Trump’s choice of Graham’s sister for the South Carolina Senate race already know the family remained in the state’s political fight after his death; the bribery claims add noise, not proof.

Clyburn’s communications director, Jami LaRue, drew a hard line between donations and official action.

"Whatever a donor may think or say, a donation would never cause Congressman Clyburn to increase his support for the donor’s request."

LaRue added that Clyburn has long worked to help the University of South Carolina and other colleges in his district, and that “the crimes and lies of an imprisoned fraudster will not cause the Congressman to waver in his support for these fine institutions.”

David Snider, speaking for Wilson, said the congressman “has always abided by campaign donation regulations set forth by the Federal Election Commission.”

Three offices, three denials, and zero subjects named among the members of Congress. That is the record ProPublica still chose to frame as a major corruption tale.

FBI documents and a probe that never landed

ProPublica reviewed FBI documents and reported that Kao’s admission lined up with records seized from Navatek. Those records named former Navatek executives Duke Hartman and Joshua Knight as subjects. Neither man was charged. Both later co-founded the naval research firm Integer Technologies.

The same records, as described to ProPublica, show Graham, Clyburn, and Wilson were not subjects. Agents investigated their interactions with Kao and left open the possibility the lawmakers could become subjects later. That possibility never turned into a case.

Public corruption stories demand hard proof, not future hypotheticals. The country has seen enough thin FBI threads dressed up as bombshells, including a Virginia Democrat’s claim that the bureau monitored his calls in a state senate corruption probe. Scrutiny cuts both ways.

The bureau’s own response to The Hill left little room for spin.

"[H]alf-baked misleading claims from former FBI personnel and a convicted felon to spin a predetermined narrative."

The spokesperson called the report “false,” then added that personnel are removed only when they have acted unethically, undermined the mission, or engaged in weaponization of law enforcement, and that “any suggestion otherwise is false.”

Personnel changes end a case built on sand

After President Trump returned to the White House, many FBI and Justice Department teams that investigated public corruption were disbanded. The two agents working the Navatek-related scheme were among those no longer on the matter. With none of its investigators left, the case is effectively dead.

A dead case that never named Graham, Clyburn, or Wilson as subjects, that never charged the named company executives, and that leaned on a felon seeking a lighter sentence is not the clean triumph of accountability some outlets wanted. It is an unfinished inquiry that collapsed under its own thin sourcing.

Graham’s broader record still draws national attention on foreign policy, including the House-passed Russia and Iran sanctions bill that carries his name and the earlier Senate’s bipartisan 86-11 vote to pass that sanctions package. Those legislative fights are documented. The bribery claims against him remain the word of a man already convicted of campaign crimes.

Influence stories around Graham have circulated for years, some far more concrete than a contractor’s prison monologue, including Miriam Adelson’s account of years of daily calls between Sheldon Adelson and the late senator. Donors and lawmakers talk. Talking is not bribery. A guilty plea for illegal donations by a contractor does not automatically indict every member he tried to cultivate.

What the verified record actually shows

Navatek chased South Carolina work and university partnerships after losing its longtime Hawaii patron. Money for a research project landed in a December 2019 spending bill. Kao later pleaded guilty to campaign and fraud offenses and tried to trade information for sentence relief. The FBI opened an inquiry in early 2025, examined interactions with three South Carolina lawmakers, and never designated those lawmakers as subjects. Hartman and Knight were named in seized records and never charged. The bureau now says the public narrative built from this material is false and misleading. The investigative team is gone and the matter is dead.

That sequence does not prove a Capitol Hill bribery ring. It proves a defense contractor ran a dirty shop, its CEO got caught, and an ambitious media report tried to stretch his cooperation into a bipartisan scandal that the FBI itself will not stand behind.

Taxpayers should want real public-corruption cases pursued with solid evidence and honest process. They should not accept convicted fraudsters and agenda-driven article as a substitute for proof.