How Trump’s FBI purge saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn from a bribery investigation

On March 3, 2020, Sen. Lindsey Graham walked into a private dining room at Charlie Palmer Steak in Washington, D.C. Graham’s time was expensive. He was meeting with two executives and a lobbyist from a Hawaiian naval defense contractor called Navatek. And he had required them to commit to $40,000 in campaign contributions for a 45-minute meeting.Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, was confident that was all the time he needed.“Shoot all he has to really do is stop by and say ‘yes,’” Kao wrote to a Navatek lobbyist and a fellow executive the day before, in an email seen by ProPublica. “That should only take a minute and he’s on his way. We don’t need to pretend we give a shit about each other.”At the dinner, Graham ate little and talked a lot. But Kao got the “yes” he was hoping for: Graham agreed to steer a $10 million government contract...