New reporting from MSNBC thickens the Tom Homan bribery plot.
Earlier this month, the outlet revealed that Homan was caught accepting $50,000 in cash from undercover agents in September 2024, as part of an FBI investigation that’s since been closed by the Trump administration. The soon-to-be border czar had reportedly promised the agents, who posed as businessmen, he’d help them secure federal contracts once Trump won the election and he assumed his post.
On Monday, MSNBC reported that the FBI investigation into Homan began after Julian Calderas—a former ICE official, who worked under Homan during the Obama administration—allegedly told the undercover agents that Homan could help them eventually score contracts if they coughed up $1 million.
Calderas, who, like Homan at the time, ran his own private government contracting consulting firm, allegedly brought the plan to the undercover agents in May 2023—which ultimately led to the meeting in which Homan accepted the $50,000, and during which Calderas also reportedly accepted $10,000.
According to “sources familiar with the probe,” MSNBC reports, the FBI felt it must initiate an investigation into Homan “after Calderas told agents in an unrelated investigation that Homan was willing to influence which companies would win federal contracts in a second Trump administration in exchange for money.”
When asked if he knew about the criminal investigation, Calderas told MSNBC “I know nothing about this,” and, “If this is the case, I’m going to need to talk to my lawyer.”
That the Homan investigation branched off of an existing investigation into Calderas—an associate and supporter of Homan, per his digital footprint—cuts against the Trump administration’s already fatuous argument that the Homan was the victim of a “blatantly political investigation” by the Biden administration “to target President Trump’s allies.”
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