Mike Collins made a campaign video blasting the Biden administration for letting “unvetted” and “unchecked” people into the country. What he didn’t mention: a man facing multiple felony charges, including using a computer to solicit a child, was on his own trucking company’s payroll the entire time those charges were pending.
Georgia Senate candidate Rep. Mike Collins (R) is facing new scrutiny over his own trucking company’s hiring record, according to Sources Say News, after records showed a former employee facing serious felony charges remained on staff for years while the case was pending.
What the Records Show
Walter Stargell, a former employee at Collins’s trucking company, was charged in 2018 with multiple felonies, including using a computer to seduce, solicit, or lure a child to commit an illegal act. According to records cited by Sources Say News, Stargell was still working for Collins’s company as recently as 2022, meaning the charges sat pending against him for roughly four years while he remained employed there. He was ultimately convicted in 2023.
A spokesperson for Collins responded to the outlet’s questions by saying, “this individual passed a third-party background check before his brief employment and was not convicted of the mentioned crime until well after his employment had ended.” That statement addresses the conviction timeline but doesn’t dispute that the felony charges themselves, not just the eventual conviction, were already on record and pending during at least part of Stargell’s employment.
Why the Timing Matters for Collins Specifically
This isn’t landing as an abstract personnel issue. Collins has built a substantial part of his political brand around border security and vetting rhetoric, including a video calling out the Biden administration for allowing “unvetted” and “unchecked” people into the country. Critics quoted by Sources Say News argue that framing sits uneasily next to a felony solicitation charge sitting unresolved for years on his own company’s payroll, essentially asking why the same standard of scrutiny Collins demands of federal immigration policy apparently wasn’t applied inside his own business.
What’s Still Unclear
Sources Say News’s reporting, drawn from a newsletter format, doesn’t specify exactly when in 2018 Stargell was hired relative to when charges were filed, nor does it detail what the “third-party background check” actually screened for or when it was conducted relative to the charges becoming public record. Those details would matter for assessing whether this reflects a hiring failure, a monitoring failure once charges were filed, or something the background check simply wasn’t designed to catch. Collins’s campaign has not, as of this reporting, provided further specifics beyond the single statement given to Sources Say News.
The Bottom Line
A man facing multiple felony charges, including soliciting a child online, remained employed at Mike Collins’s trucking company for roughly four years while those charges were pending, only leaving before his eventual 2023 conviction. Collins has centered his Senate campaign on demanding stricter vetting of who enters the country. His own company’s employment record during this period raises the obvious question of whether that same standard was ever applied at home.