On June 27, 2025, Blackstone chief executive Stephen Schwarzman wrote a check for $2 million to Pine Tree Results PAC — the super PAC formed to reelect Susan Collins. The contribution is in the Federal Election Commission's own records of his giving.
Two and a half months later, on September 10, 2025, Collins voted to defeat an amendment that would have forced the Justice Department to release the Jeffrey Epstein case files.
Schwarzman's name appears in the Epstein files 23 times, The Daily Beast has reported, including one email in which Epstein called him "terrific." The story that surfaced his giving to Collins describes him as "associated with Epstein through New York's exclusive Core Club." He has not been accused of wrongdoing by any of Epstein's victims, and there is no allegation that he did anything illegal. What is true is narrow and documented: his name is in the material Collins voted not to force into the open, and his money is in the committee spending millions to keep her in the Senate.
The vote
The Senate voted 51–49 to dismiss the language, the Portland Press Herald reported. Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rand Paul of Kentucky were the only two who crossed over to join every Democrat. Collins voted with her party.
Schumer offered the language as an amendment to the annual defense bill, and Republicans voted to table it — a procedural motion that killed it without a vote on the merits. Collins' written explanation, issued through her office, was about process:
"In July, the Senate Appropriations Committee, which I chair, approved unanimously on a bipartisan basis a similar provision to compile and report the Epstein files as part of the Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) funding bill... If Democrats hadn't blocked it from going to the floor, this amendment could have already been passed by the Senate as part of a bill that funds the Department of Justice."
She is not wrong that there was another vehicle. Two months later the Senate passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act by unanimous consent — no recorded vote — and it became law; the Daily Beast notes that Collins voted against the 2025 procedural efforts "before later supporting legislation requiring their release." But the vote in front of her in September was the one that would have forced disclosure that day, and she voted it down. Two Republicans in the chamber decided the vehicle mattered less than the disclosure.
The money kept coming after the vote
Schwarzman did not stop. On June 26, 2026 — nine and a half months after the vote — he gave Pine Tree Results another $1 million, bringing his total to $3 million for this cycle.
Pine Tree Results is not a mystery committee. The Press Herald calls it, plainly, the "pro-Collins super PAC", and it has spent the cycle running attack ads against her Democratic opponents. FEC filings show it raised $20.6 million in the 2026 cycle and had spent $12.4 million by the most recent report. Its largest single independent expenditures are all ads opposing Maine Democrats Graham Platner and Troy Jackson — nearly $2 million and $2.2 million a shot.
Schwarzman is not the only billionaire in it. Bloomberg Government reported that billionaire Paul Singer helped the pro-Collins super PAC bank $10 million, and the Maine Monitor counted nearly 100 billionaires and their spouses donating to reelect her.
We have written this exact story before, about a different Republican
Susan Collins is not the only Republican on a 2026 Senate ballot whose Epstein-files position and Epstein-files donors point in the same direction.
Ashley Hinson, running for Senate in Iowa, refused to sign the House discharge petition that would have forced the files out — while taking nearly $90,000 from billionaires named in those files, including $30,500 during the window she was refusing to sign.
Two states, two Senate races, the same shape.
What Mainers wanted
Maine Democratic Party spokesman Tommy Garcia cited a recent poll that suggested an overwhelming majority of Mainers believed all the documents should be released.
"Yesterday, Susan Collins chose to protect Donald Trump and the rich and powerful instead of standing up for victims and the American people."
That is a partisan opponent talking, and it should be read as one. The FEC filings are not partisan, and they say the same thing about who is funding the campaign.
What the filings show
Stephen Schwarzman, whose name appears in the Jeffrey Epstein files, has given $3 million to the super PAC working to reelect Susan Collins — $2 million of it two and a half months before she voted, 51–49, to kill the amendment that would have forced the Justice Department to release those files, and another $1 million nine and a half months after. That super PAC has raised $20.6 million this cycle and spent it attacking her opponents. Two Senate Republicans voted the other way on the amendment. Collins was not one of them.
Source
Embattled Republican Senator Susan Collins Blasted Over 'Epstein Donors' — The Daily Beast, August 31, 2026. Contribution amounts and dates verified independently against Federal Election Commission filings.
