It was two months ago when MS NOW was first to report on an undercover FBI operation from last year, in which Tom Homan was recorded 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.
FBI and Justice Department officials planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise, but the case ultimately stalled after Donald Trump began his second presidential term and made Homan the White House border czar. In the late summer, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the case.
The search for answers on Capitol Hill, however, is ongoing.
In a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the Justice Department’s criminal division, three Democratic senators — Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Adam Schiff of California, each of whom serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee — demanded a variety of details related to the case. Specifically, the lawmakers gave the DOJ a deadline of 20 business days to produce the following information:
1. All close-out memoranda, reports, case memoranda, declination memoranda, FBI closing electronic communications, or other records related to closing this investigation.
2. All communications between White House officials and Department of Justice or FBI employees related to closing this investigation.
3. All records reflecting, and any, video or audio recordings of Tom Homan interacting with undercover FBI agents, including accepting money from such agents.
4. All records reflecting Department of Justice or FBI approval of the disbursement or use of the confidential funds delivered to Homan as part of this investigation.
5. All records reflecting an audit or accounting of the confidential funds delivered to Homan, including records of wires or audits by the FBI’s Commercial Payments and Confidential Services Unit.
6. All records reflecting applications for access to Homan’s tax returns pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 6103(i), section 9-13.900 of the Justice Manual, or any other authority.
7. All court orders granting or denying access to Homan’s tax returns.
“The ‘no transparency’ Trump administration has repeatedly thumbed their nose to my many legitimate oversight requests,” Whitehouse said in a statement first made available to MaddowBlog. “For Democrats, there’s plenty of dripping contempt, insults, and stonewalling of Congress’s constitutional oversight authority. But for Republican priorities, there’s a fast-track for document dumps. FOIA requests are my last resort to get answers to questions that are important to the American public.”
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee made separate requests to Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi in late September, though the law enforcement leaders left the questions unanswered.
For his part, Homan sat down with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham shortly after MS NOW broke the story, and the host offered him an opportunity to deny the allegations. The White House border czar insisted he “did nothing illegal,” but it was hard not to notice that he carefully avoided the underlying question of whether he accepted $50,000 in cash in a Cava bag.
In mid-October, Homan clarified his position, telling NewsNation’s Bill O’Reilly, “I didn’t take $50,000 from anybody.”
There is an easy way to resolve the underlying questions. As MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian explained online after the controversy first reached the public, “To settle this, it would be great if the White House would release the case files and any FBI recordings of Homan’s meetings with undercover agents posing as businessmen.”
To date, that hasn’t happened.
The FOIA request from Sens. Whitehouse, Blumenthal and Schiff was dated Nov. 21. They have not yet received a response from Trump’s Justice Department. Watch this space.
