Susan Collins Voted to Bury the Epstein Files. Then the Epstein Class Paid Up.

Follow the money. It is the oldest instruction in this trade, and in Maine it leads somewhere ugly.

Susan Collins spent this cycle voting to keep the Jeffrey Epstein files in the dark. Then the receipts arrived. According to The Daily Beast, (cite index="1">federal filings show Collins and her political committees spent years taking money from people with ties to the notorious child sex trafficker, including Jay Lefkowitz, the lawyer who helped secure Epstein's controversial 2008 plea deal, and Leon Black, who paid Epstein $158 million for "tax, estate planning, and other related services." The paper also names (cite index="1">Bill Gates, Casey Wasserman, and Peter Thiel among donors with links to Epstein who have given to Collins' campaign.

The numbers are specific, and they are not small. (cite index="2">Wasserman, who reportedly flew on Epstein's plane and exchanged sexually explicit emails with Ghislaine Maxwell, gave about $10,000 to Collins' campaign, and Blackstone chief Stephen Schwarzman, tied to Epstein through Manhattan's exclusive Core Club, gave $3 million to Pine Tree Results, the super PAC backing Collins. To be clear, so is this: none of these donors has been charged in connection with these donations, and the contributions are legal and publicly reported. That is the whole point. The rot is legal. The senator took the checks with her eyes open.

Her own party's opposition is not letting it breathe. (cite index="1">"After 30 years in D.C., Susan Collins has stopped fighting for Mainers and taken the side of the billionaires and the Epstein class," said a Maine Democratic Party spokesman, tying the votes to the donors in one sentence. Awkward, when you have made a career out of being "concerned."

Then there is the help. In June, (cite index="3">Collins named county commissioner Wayne Erkkinen as her town chair in Greenville, putting him in charge of grassroots campaigns and voter outreach. The problem, as The Daily Beast's reporting laid bare: (cite index="3">Erkkinen, 81, was identified by the Anti-Defamation League as a member of the Oath Keepers, the far-right group that played a major role in the January 6 attack, and his name appeared in the group's leaked membership rolls of more than 38,000 names. Erkkinen says he joined in 2010 thinking it was for veterans and (cite index="3">quit "years ago," before the storming of the Capitol, because he didn't want to be part of something violent. Fine. But the woman who lectures America about institutions handed her turnout operation to a man on the insurrectionists' list.

And the old wound still bleeds. This week Democrats and reproductive-rights groups made her Kavanaugh vote the centerpiece of the campaign to end her, arguing (cite index="4">she paved the way for the fall of Roe. (cite index="4">Collins has consistently said she does not regret voting to confirm Kavanaugh. In the oldest state in the country, where older women once formed her base, that is not stubbornness. It is a bet against her own voters.

Here is the number that should worry Camp Collins. (cite index="5">A recent Fox News poll had Jackson up two points, 48 to 46, and an Abacus poll showed Jackson leading likely voters by nine, 52 to 43. Forecasters still call it a coin flip: (cite index="6">one model gives Collins a 51.5 percent chance and projects a Republican margin of two-tenths of a point, rating the race Tilt Republican. A five-term incumbent, in a state that has not backed a Republican for president since 1988, clinging to the decimal points.

And about that graceful exit she promised. In March she vowed a sixth term would be her last. This week, in a Politico interview at a lobster shack, (cite index="7">Collins declined to rule out running again six years from now, when she would be 79, despite having pledged in 1996 to serve only two terms, saying "Never say never in politics." Never say never. Two terms became six. "Concerned" became a rubber stamp. And the files stay sealed while the Epstein class writes the checks. MUCK YOU, Senator.