White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt vehemently denied border czar Tom Homan ever accepted a bag of cash after a bombshell report from MSNBC that he had been under investigation for bribery.
A probe was launched into Homan last summer after he allegedly accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives. But the Justice Department closed the investigation after Donald Trump returned to the White House.
“Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you’re referring to, so you should get your facts straight,” Leavitt angrily fired back on Monday at a reporter who asked about the Homan investigation and if he would be returning the money.
“This was another example of the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump’s strongest and most vocal supporters,” Leavitt claimed.
Leavitt argued FBI agents went undercover “to try and entrap one of the president’s top allies and supporters.”
According to the MSNBC report, Homan was swept up in an unrelated investigation last summer after the subject of that investigation claimed he was soliciting payments in exchange for contracts should Trump win the 2024 election.
An spokesperson on Monday told Daily Beast MSNBC stands by its reporting. The report relied on multiple people familiar with the case, as well as reviewing documents.
Undercover FBI agents pretending to be contractors allegedly met with a business colleague several times last summer, who reportedly introduced them to Homan. On September 20, 2024, hidden cameras were rolling as Homan allegedly accepted $50,000 in cash, according to MSNBC sources and a summary of the case.
A separate The New York Times report detailed that the cash payment was made inside a bag from the chain restaurant Cava and grew out of a long-running counterintelligence investigation.
The FBI and Justice Department had been reportedly waiting to see if Homan would deliver on the alleged promise once he became Trump’s top immigration official, but the probe stalled out after Trump took office.
The investigation was then closed in recent weeks, according to the MSNBC report, after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on it.
The White House on Monday insisted that Trump’s border czar did nothing wrong.
“Even the president’s Department of Justice, even Kash Patel’s FBI looked into this just to make sure they had a number of different prosecutors and FBI agents who looked into this,” Leavitt claimed. “They found zero evidence of illegal activity or criminal wrongdoing.”
She said the president and White House stand by Homan “100 percent because he did absolutely nothing wrong.”
Leavitt’s claim on the case directly contradicts the MSNBC report, which indicated several FBI and Justice Department officials believed they had a strong criminal case against Homan for conspiracy to commit bribery based on the recording of him accepting cash and a promise to assist with contracts.
While the White House slammed the probe as weaponization, Democrats have sounded the alarms.
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for the administration to turn over the tapes to Congress.
Sen. Adam Schiff said in a statement that every contract approved or supported by Homan needed to be scrutinized by Congress and independent watchdogs.
