White House border czar Tom Homan was already a controversial figure in the Trump administration, but revelations about a bribery probe have taken concerns about the official to a new level. MSNBC reported over the weekend:
In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC.
The full report is well worth your time, but to summarize, it was about a year ago when hidden cameras captured a meeting in Texas where Homan met with undercover FBI agents posing as contractors. He allegedly indicated he would facilitate securing contracts for them in exchange for money once he was in office, and soon after, he allegedly accepted $50,000 in bills, according to an internal summary of the case and MSNBC sources.
After Donald Trump returned to the White House and the president gave Homan an influential position, the investigation into the matter “indefinitely stalled,” and in recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the case.
The FBI and Trump’s Justice Department said investigators found “no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing,” which brought an end to the matter. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went considerably further, suggesting it was the FBI — not Homan — that was in the wrong.
Q: Did the president ask the DOJ to close the Homan investigation and does he have to return the $50,000LEAVITT: Mr. Homan never took the $50,000, so you should get your facts straight … you had FBI agents going undercover to try and entrap one of the president's top allies and supporters
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-09-22T17:34:09.960Z
The investigation, Leavitt claimed with a straight face, was “another example of the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice.” (Why a corrupted DOJ would target a private citizen, instead of one of the hundreds of Republicans running for prominent public offices, is unclear.) She added that FBI agents tried to “entrap” a Trump supporter during the 2024 campaign.
In other words, while this might look like a controversy in which an investigation into a Trump ally quickly disappeared after Republicans returned to power, the underlying investigation, as the White House sees it, can actually be explained away with yet another fanciful and evidence-free conspiracy theory.
Sure, it’s possible that federal investigators chose not to proceed with the case on the merits — the U.S. Supreme Court has made it rather difficult to prosecute bribery cases — and that this isn’t an instance in which a presidential pal benefited from his relationship with Trump.
But it’s not as if Trump’s DOJ has earned the benefit of the doubt, especially on matters related to corruption. On the contrary, NBC News reported recently, “For decades, the FBI and the Justice Department have been the main enforcers of laws against political corruption and white-collar fraud in the United States.” In 2025, however, the Trump administration “has dismantled key parts of that law enforcement infrastructure, creating what experts say is the ripest environment for corruption by public officials and business executives in a generation.” Consider the recent pattern of events: The Trump administration has never explicitly said that it’s tolerant of corruption, but given the circumstances, it didn’t really have to. It’s something to keep in mind as the burgeoning Homan controversy continues to unfold. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
