
In 10 minutes or less, The Opinions podcast brings you a fresh way to understand the news.
With voices from New York Times Opinion.
I've got a break for you. I'm actually going to tell you some good news today.
One idea, one analysis, one perspective at a Time.
Featuring David Brooks. Tressy McMillan-Podham. Michelle Goldberg.
Thomas Friedmann.
And many more. Find The Opinions in your podcast player.
From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitrowaf. This is The Daily.
The White House Borders are Tom Homan was recorded on an FBI surveillance tape in September 2024, accepting $50,000 in cash. Did he keep that money or give it back?
For the past few weeks, Trump officials have been asked repeatedly about an undercover FBI investigation of border Tsar Tom Homan. What became of the $50,000 in cash that the FBI delivered to Mr. Homan? And consistently, they've sidestepped. Did he accept that $50,000 or not?
George, I don't know what you're talking about. Did he accept $50,000 for what?
Or refuse to answer key questions. Did the FBI get it back? Senator Whitehouse, you're welcome to talk to the FBI. About whether one of Trump's top immigration officials brazenly broke the law and what's being done about it. The Whitehouse and the President stand by Tom Homan 100% because he did absolutely nothing wrong. Today, my colleague Devlyn Barrett on the story behind those questions and why the Tom Homan scandal hasn't fated away. It's Wednesday, October 15th. Devlyn, I've been watching this story of these allegations surrounding Tom Homan unfold over the past several weeks. And as I've watched, I keep thinking about this interview I did with Homan on the show in June. One thing that really stuck with me from that interview was just how uncompromising Homan was in the way he presented his view of the law and what should happen to people who break it, that they should be punished. I want to just play you a little bit of tape about how he represented himself and that mission.
We're nice from laws. We got to enforce the laws.
Entering this country legal is a crime. We don't pick and choose what we enforce.
We're here to enforce the law.
Then recently, we got some new information about Holman. Tell us when you first learned about this story.
I cover the Justice Department and the FBI. Months ago, I had started hearing rumblings that there had been some bribery investigation related to Tom Holman. But I couldn't quite figure out what it was about or where it was. For a while, it just was a puzzle I couldn't solve.
You had a lot of stories you were covering.
It's pretty busy at the DOJ and the FBI most days. Then sometime in September, I got a little more information where someone knew some of the answers to these questions and said, Oh, you the case with a bag of cash.
Wow, bag of cash. That's a pretty big tip.
Well, right. That's not what you think of as, let's call it regular business practice. It's almost the stereotypical way that people think of corruption cases.
Yeah.
From that point, I started putting more pieces together and figuring more things out. I wasn't the only reporter chasing this. Msnbc also figured it out. What I eventually came to understand was that there had been, beginning really in 2023, but stretching all the way into this year, a really fascinating investigation that came to include Tom Homan. As it's been described to me by sources, if you go back to the spring of 2023, the FBI in Texas was conducting an undercover investigation related to a particular businessman The investigation, my sources were adamant, was not looking at Tom Holman at all. But in the course of that investigation, that businessman told the undercover agents that if those agents who were posing as businessmen looking for government contracts, if they were willing to pay Tom Holman a million dollars, he could steer government contracts to them.
So these agents weren't initially fishing for anything related to Tom Holman. They weren't looking at him at that time.
My sources are adamant that no one had asked about Tom Holman. That was brought up unprompted, and Tom Holman just wanders into the picture, wanders into the frame of what the FBI agents are already doing.
Wow. Just to put us in time here, we're in 2023. We know Tom Holman as the former ICE director in the first Trump administration, this longtime border official. He actually served in the Obama administration. But he's not in government at this point, right?
Right. He's just a private citizen, and he runs a consulting business for companies that are seeking contracts. It's not completely out of the blue that he would have some interest in government contracts. But again, he's not in government at that time. He's known mostly as a former Trump official, who is what they sometimes call a campaign surrogate. He often would appear speaking publicly in support of another Trump administration. There's a lot of general expectation that if Trump wins re-election, Homan will rejoin the government. In November of 2023, he out and out says it. He says, I promise President Trump that if he goes back, I go back. Then he added to that, and I'm going to run the biggest deportation operation this country has ever seen.
Right. He's widely seen as a likely member of a future Trump administration. He's saying he's going to be there. And there's this sense that a lot of money is going to be thrown at the area that he's going to be involved in in border enforcement.
Well, right. That whole time period, the Trump campaign is talking about deporting millions of people. It is a very expensive prospect. So there's a natural expectation that there will be significant government contracts related to both border security work and deportation work.
Okay, so back to the investigation. What happens next?
Once that businessman just proposes this notion that the undercover agents could pay Tom Homan to get government contracts, a series of conversations follow. This investigation goes on for a long time, but eventually a meeting is set up for September 20th, 2024. At that meeting, my sources tell me the undercover agents bring $50,000 in cash, and that cash is put in a takeout food bag, a bag from the chain Cava. What has been described to me is at that meeting, Homan both accepts the cash and seems to convey that he's willing to help them get contracts in the future.
Do we know exactly what he says, Devlin? Do we have any specific information about that?
We don't know know exactly what he says, and that's obviously a big question in this whole process. But we do know that the FBI agents made an audio recording of the meeting. So somewhere in government files, there exists, I am told, an audio recording of this discussion. What's been described to me is that Homan accepts the cash and leaves. That's a great start to an investigation. You've got a lot to work with there, right? Because because the person you're investigating has taken the money and appears to have agreed to do things in exchange for the money. But that's not really the end of the investigation.
Why not?
For a couple of reasons. One, because there was no very specific act that he agreed to do in exchange for that money. Two, it's important to remember, at the time he takes the money, Tom Homan is still not a government official. He certainly can't make the Biden administration, which was running the government at that time, award contracts. In the moment the cash is handed over, Homan really can't deliver even if he wants to.
Right. I guess the assumption here is that this is like a down payment for future services that he could potentially render, correct?
Right. The investigators thought of it as this is the start of the relationship. This is the start of the process.
Devlin, does that help explain a question I've had about all this, which is $50,000 is a a lot of money, but it also doesn't feel like enough for someone like Homan to do something this risky that could really jeopardize his career.
It wasn't necessarily that you give him this $50,000, and then he immediately starts doing things for you. One source described it as they paid money to make a friend in a regular corruption investigation. There would naturally be follow-up meetings, maybe follow-up payments. That's certainly a possibility in such an investigation.
Right. They're playing the long game here.
Exactly. They have a very strong start to a case. They have very good evidence, and they have a very good basis to proceed with their investigation. Then Trump wins the election. Within days of Trump winning the election, the President-elect announces that Tom Homan will become his border Tsar. Not many people know the ins and of the Tsar positions that government and White Houses sometimes announced.
Yeah, I've always wondered, is that a real long term position in the US government, Tsar?
It's not something you're nominated for. It's not something that the Senate confirms you for. It's very much a point person for an administration on a particular subject. But what matters in this instance is that because there's no Senate confirmation, there's not the same background check scrubbing that goes on for a Tsar position as there is for a cabinet official or a deputy cabinet official. That's important in Homan situation because there is this underlying outstanding case.
Are you saying basically that this might have been intentional, that the Trump administration might have nominated Homan to the Tsar position in order to avoid a background check?
It's really unclear. But we do know, however, that during the transition, after Trump is elected, but before he is sworn into office, federal law enforcement officials notify and essentially warn the incoming administration that this investigation exists into Tom Homan.
The Trump Justice Department then does inherit this investigation. Walk us through what they do with it.
The short answer is they don't do much of anything with it. The senior officials of that administration look at the case, and they don't like it. They're very skeptical that this is anything worth pursuing. This case that the agents and investigators thought was a very solid case, a very promising start, it just gets closed.
We'll be right back.
My name is Jasmine Uyoa, and I'm a national politics reporter for the New York Times. I grew up in Texas on the border with Mexico, and I've been reporting in the region since I was in high school. Now I travel the country looking for stories and voices that really capture what immigration and the nation's demographic changes mean for people. What I keep encountering is that people don't fall into neat ideological boxes on this very volatile issue. There's a lot of gray. And that's where I feel the most interesting stories are. I'm trying to bring that complexity and nuance to our audience, and that's really what all of my colleagues on the politics team and every journalist at the New York Times is aiming to do. Our mission is to help you understand the world no matter how complicated it might be. If you want to support this mission, consider subscribing to the New York Times. You can do that at nytimes. Com/subscribe.
So Devlyn, Once this story breaks about the investigation and about the ending of the investigation, what happens? How does the Trump administration respond? Do they explain their decision to drop this case?
When we asked the Justice Department to explain why was this case closed, the FBI director, Cash Patel, and the Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanch, said that it was reviewed by agents and prosecutors, and they They said those agents and prosecutors found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing. They basically called it a baseless investigation, and that's why they say they closed it.
They don't mention the bag of cash, specifically?
They don't mention the bag of cash, and that becomes a real focal point of all the questions that follow about what the administration did here and why they did it. One of the first very public comments about this is the White House Press Secretary, Karen Levit. Does Homan have to return the $50,000?
Well, Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you're referring to, so you should get your facts straight, number one.
Denying that he took the money at all. Hours after that, Tom I want to give you a chance to address this article that came out over the weekend. Tom Homan goes on Fox News, and he's given an opportunity to just respond to the reporting, respond to these allegations. His answer is very telling in one way in that he he never denies taking the money.
Look, I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal.
And this hit piece after hit piece after hit piece. He repeats very emphatically that he didn't commit any crime. And I'm glad the FBI and DOJ came out and said, and It said that nothing illegal happened, no criminal activity.
Yeah, suddenly we're talking not about whether this happened or not, but about whether it was legal. And obviously, those two things are very different.
Right. And so the administration ends up getting very adamant about the point that Homan makes in his interview on this, which is just to say there was no crime here. And that becomes a mantra throughout the administration as the questions keep coming up. Do you know sitting here- All I know is that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch and FBI Director Patel said there was no case. Last week, there's a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in which attorney general Pam Bondi is very confrontational.
If you worked for me, you would have been fired.
She is adamant that no crime was committed, and she basically goes on the attack and just criticizes the lawmakers who are even asking the question. In the same vein, just this past weekend, the vice president, JD Vance, is interviewed by ABC's George Stefanopoulos, and he's asked again about Tom Homan in the Bag of Cash. Are you saying that you Did he not accept the $50,000? Vance's answer is very similar to Bondi's. The question is, did he do something illegal? And there's absolutely no evidence that Tom Holman has ever taken a bribe with him. I'm asking a different question. I'm asking you, did he accept- Which is why he's working in the administration. He insists no crime was committed and again, goes on the attack for even asking the question.
Of course, this administration dropped the investigation before they could actually prove of whether or not a crime was being committed. So Devlin, what do you make of their argument?
On a political level, their argument is very simple. This was a partisan witch hunt generated by the last Democratic administration arbitration. The legal argument is actually a little more complicated, and it touches on a lot of things. First, I would just say not everyone inside the Justice Department has the exact same view about this case. I have talked to people who feel very strongly that it was a very strong case, a chargeable case, a pursuable case, and it's frustrating to those people that the case was dropped. I have talked to other people inside the department who have made the argument, Look, this was a great beginning of a case. We had not finished the case, and it's not a terrific case without more evidence. There aren't universal views about this, even inside the department. But also this case speaks to what's really a long-running disagreement about whether or not the Justice Department is overusing and stretching corruption laws beyond what they were intended to do. Over a number of years, the Supreme Court has basically whittled away at how federal corruption laws can be used and has repeatedly sent a signal to the Justice Department that certainly the Conservatives on the Court believe that the Justice Department is, in many cases, misusing or overusing corruption statutes to go after politicians.
Meaning there's a disagreement within the legal community about what actually constitutes corruption, or at least what's the threshold for proving it in court.
Well, exactly. One of the ways that this case gets argued about among lawyers is there's something called stream of benefits corruption, which makes the argument that you don't need a very explicit quid pro quo. You don't need a very explicit, You give me X dollars and I will do Y for you.
Soprano style.
Right. That what you can have is a corrupt flow relationship where I do the following things for you, like cash, and you, in exchange, do the following things for me, like official favors, like getting contracts, but the court has to believe that it's explicit. It can't just be a vague set of actions. That's the argument for how you could charge a case like this?
There are obviously a lot of open legal questions here, and maybe what the FBI had in its hands wasn't an open and shut case yet. But Homan taking this money as a lawman, as the chief spokesman of administration's immigration policy, it does raise all sorts of questions. The administration not following up also raises questions. I guess what I'm wondering, Devlin, is there's been so many similar scandals swirling around the Trump administration at this point, allegations of corruption, from crypto to the free airplane. A lot of those have fated away in the fire hose of news that we are all experiencing on a day-to-day basis. But this one has outlived the Trump news cycle. Why?
I mean, look, as someone who covers the Justice Department and the FBI, I will tell you that there are many corruption cases that are hard to follow, hard to explain, hard to just unravel and unpack. Crypto isn't an easy thing to explain. Sure. You know what is easy to explain? I have a bag full of cash. That's pretty simple. Why did he take a bag of cash? What did he do with the cash? In addition to how simple a bag of cash is, we know from the reporting that an audio tape exists somewhere.
Right. And that tape could be released. People could start demanding its release.
Right. If you think for a minute about the Jeffrey Epstein case, obviously, the Tom Homan case is not the Jeffrey Epstein case. Epstein is a completely different type of case with a completely different history. But the demand to release the Tom Homan tape is in some ways very similar to the demands to release the Epstein files because it's a simple, straightforward question. When you are told no, it begs the question, Well, why is the answer no?
Can I just ask, do we know what happened to the money, the 50,000?
We really don't. A lot of what you've seen since the initial reporting is people trying to figure out the answer to that question, but the administration really won't tell us, and Homan so far hasn't told us. The case may be dead, but I think what hasn't died is people's desire to know the answer to that question. I think for the foreseeable future, wherever Tom Homan goes, he's going to be asked that question. What did you do with the money?
Well, Devlin, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Thanks for happening.
We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. On Tuesday, President Trump announced that the US had killed six men aboard a boat off the Coast of Venezuela, the fifth known strike on a boat in the Caribbean Sea since September. He said the men had been transporting drugs but provided no evidence to support that claim. And while he posted a video of the attack, the President offered no details about the nationality of the suspects and didn't identify them as belonging to any particular criminal group. The US military has now killed 27 people in these boat attacks, treating them as if they were enemy soldiers in the middle of a war zone rather than criminal suspects.
It's a great honor to have the leader of Argentina, a place that I love, I've been to, and one of the most beautiful places in the world, President.
I really want to thank you very much. Trump hosted Argentinian President Javier Mallet at the White House on Tuesday, just days after the US agreed to move ahead with a $20 billion bailout of Argentina. We think he's going to win. He should win.
If he does win, we're going to be very helpful. If If he doesn't win, we're not going to waste our time because you have somebody whose philosophy has no chance of making Argentina great again.
Trump explicitly tied US economic support for the country to the political fortunes of Mallet, who's trying to save off a financial meltdown at home and whose party is facing tough midterm elections this month. Trump acknowledged that the bailout was intended to support the Argentinian leaders' fiscally conservative policies and wouldn't make a big difference for the US. Today's episode was produced by Kaitlyn O'Keefe and Carlos Prieto. It was edited by Lizzo Baylen and Michael Benoît and contains original music by Marion Lozano, Will Reid, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for The Daily. I'm Natalie Ketroff. See you tomorrow.
For the past few weeks, Trump officials have repeatedly dodged questions about an undercover F.B.I. investigation of the border czar, Tom Homan, and what became of $50,000 in cash that was delivered to him.Devlin Barret, who covers the F.B.I. for The New York Times, discusses the inquiry, which was closed after President Trump came to office.Guest: Devlin Barrett, a New York Times reporter covering the Justice Department and the F.B.I.Background reading: Mr. Homan was said to have received $50,000 from agents. He may not have to return it.Democrats have opened inquiries into the Trump administration’s decision to close the F.B.I. investigation of Mr. Homan.Photo: Doug Mills/The New York TimesFor more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.