Did the White House just gift $50,000 in stolen bribes to President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan?
A reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt Monday if Trump had asked the Department of Justice to close a bribery investigation into Homan, and whether the border czar would be forced to return the $50,000 payoff he allegedly received from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives.
“Well, Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you’re referring to, so you should get your facts straight, number one,” Leavitt replied.
But Homan was reportedly caught on camera accepting a Cava bag containing a $50,000 bribe from undercover agents during a meeting in Texas in September 2024. He allegedly promised agents who he thought were potential business partners that if Trump won, Homan could ensure favorable contracts for border enforcement. It was not immediately clear what happened to the money.
Leavitt said that the investigation into Homan was just “another example of weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump’s strongest and most vocal supporters in the midst of a presidential campaign.”
Leavitt claimed the Biden administration had tried to “entrap” Homan but didn’t account for why his camp wouldn’t have released that information ahead of the presidential election.
“Mr. Homan did absolutely nothing wrong,” Leavitt said, adding that FBI Director Kash Patel had looked into it and found “zero evidence of illegal activity or criminal wrongdoing.”
In recent weeks, Trump appointees at the Department of Justice reportedly shuttered the probe into Homan, which had been part of a long-running counterintelligence investigation targeting multiple people, anonymous sources told The New York Times. DOJ officials reportedly determined that they had insufficient evidence to support charges against Homan.
Prosecutors were also concerned about whether they could actually prove corruption because Homan did not hold a government position at the time of the meeting. But as Leavitt noted during her briefing Monday, Homan was someone the Biden administration “knew very well would be taking a government position months later.”
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