by ELIANA JONSHON OCT 14 2026 --------------------- Troy Jackson (Joseph Prezioso/Getty Images) As president of the Maine Senate, Troy Jackson, now running for U.S. Senate as an opponent of “greedy corporations,” cosponsored a bill allowing online lenders to charge exorbitantly high interest rates when offering small-dollar loans to Mainers with poor credit. His support for the measure may be explained by the fact that one of those “predatory” lenders, the Chicago-based OppFi, retained the lobbying firm that employed Jackson’s son to advocate in favor of it, the Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson reports. Jackson’s 2022 bill was framed as a measure to “Establish Consumer Protections Regarding Small Dollar Loans.” The Maine Credit Union criticized its “misleading” title, noting that the measure “would open the door for out-of-state rates and rent-a-bank schemes” by repealing portions of a 2021 law that forced online lenders outside of Maine to adhere to the state’s interest rate cap of 30 percent on loans of $2,000 or less. Under Jackson’s bill, such lenders could skirt the cap and charge significantly higher rates, saddling low-income borrowers with high-interest debt. OppFi has faced legal challenges for doing just that. The company—which offers loans that are usually between $500 and 5,000 with an average interest rate of 150 percent—agreed in November 2021 to pay a $250,000 fine and refund over 4,000 borrowers in order to settle a consumer protection lawsuit from the District of Columbia, which accused OppFi of offering “predatory” loans. Months later, the company retained the Resurgam Group, a lobbying firm founded by Jackson’s former chief of staff and current campaign adviser B.J. McCollister, to lobby in favor of the Jackson-backed bill, according to testimony McCollister submitted to the state legislature in March 2022, the same year McCollister hired Jackson’s son, Chace Jackson, as a partner. McCollister praised OppFi for helping “the 150 million consumers who are locked out of mainstream credit options gain access to credit to help rebuild financial health.” “The bill marks the latest example of Jackson using his power as Maine Senate president to benefit those close to him,” Anderson writes. “In 2024, Jackson’s final year in the role, the Resurgam Group received nearly $200,000 in lobbying compensation from nine of Jackson’s son’s clients, the Free Beacon reported. They included the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, which retained the younger Jackson and McCollister to lobby on a pair of gun control bills that Troy Jackson, a former Second Amendment supporter endorsed by the National Rifle Association as recently as 2022, voted in favor of.” READ MORE: Troy Jackson Cosponsored Bill Backed by Son’s Lobbying Firm Allowing ‘Predatory’ Loan Companies To Skirt Maine’s Interest Rate Caps --------------------------------- https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!HxbB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7ee89d7a-90c1-4c83-b4a5-51d87c7a8450_2048x1366.jpeg Abdul El-Sayed (Scott Olson/Getty Images) Abdul El-Sayed says he has no connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. But in a since-deleted Substack article, El-Sayed defended a man he described as his “friend” who was jailed for funding the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The man, Mohamed Soltan, is the son of a senior Muslim Brotherhood official who called to kill “those Zionists” and argued for “obliterating America.” The October 2021 article warned against the “bluntest form of government power” wielded by police in the United States and included the line, “Go to Egypt, where the personal whims of a dictator may mean you’ll find yourself in the bowels of an Egyptian prison, as happened to my friend Mohamed Soltan, an American citizen.” Though Soltan moved to the United States as a child, where he lived in the heavily Muslim city of Dearborn, Michigan, he was born in Egypt to Salah Soltan, a professor of Islamic law and “senior member” of the Muslim Brotherhood. The elder Soltan was one of 50 Muslim Brotherhood leaders charged with spearheading the 2013 protests aimed at reinstating Egypt’s deposed president, longtime Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi. Mohamed Soltan was sentenced to life in prison on terrorism-related charges over his role as a protest spokesman: ABC News described him as “one of the main liaisons” between the Muslim Brotherhood and the press. El-Sayed made no mention of the Muslim Brotherhood, Soltan’s father, or the circumstances surrounding Soltan’s arrest on his Substack, The Incision, which he set to private as he faced criticism on the campaign trail for old posts and videos. The Soltan family, however, is “Brotherhood royalty,” according to Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. The elder Soltan served on the organization’s most important jurisprudential bodies in North America and Europe, while the younger Soltan is “the polished version of the father,” Vidino told the Free Beacon. The Substack post is the latest example of El-Sayed’s close personal ties to the Brotherhood, which spawned Hamas in Gaza in the 1980s. Though El-Sayed told Meet the Press on Sunday that neither he nor his family has connections to the Islamic group, his half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, has said that her “family has long been MB,” the Free Beacon reported. She has also discussed her and El-Sayed’s mother’s “activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s when she was in college” in Egypt. READ MORE: Abdul El-Sayed Defended ‘Friend’ Jailed for Funding Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in Since-Deleted Substack Article ///