Senators Probe Tom Homan's Cava Bag Full of Cash
"It's the bribe heard round the Senate," per a senior leadership aide.
WASHINGTON — Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats have initiated a “robust oversight inquiry” into the abrupt termination of a public corruption investigation involving Tom Homan, the White House border czar. The inquiry follows reports that top Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI officials under the Trump Administration were briefed on the investigation and then decided to shut it down.
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In letters sent to Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday, senators expressed “grave concern” over the matter. The letters were signed by Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin and Senator Adam Schiff, along with Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Amy Klobuchar, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Cory Booker, Alex Padilla, and Peter Welch.
The investigation reportedly centered on allegations that Mr. Homan received a “significant amount of money” from undercover FBI agents in exchange for “facilitating future contracts related to border enforcement”.
According to the letters, reports from MSNBC and other news outlets allege that the FBI recorded Mr. Homan accepting $50,000 in cash in a paper bag. The senators stated that it is “difficult to believe” the investigation was closed for lacking “credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing,” as Deputy Attorney General Todd Wallace Blanche and Director Patel recently claimed. They argue that such allegations of “high-level corruption and cover-up” require “close cooperation with congressional oversight and transparency to restore public trust”.
In addition to requesting that the DOJ and FBI preserve all records related to the investigation, the senators demanded that the full investigative file, including any recordings, be delivered to Congress and made available to the public “immediately”. They noted that the DOJ and FBI have previously released records from other closed investigations, and that “this case should be no different”.
The senators’ letters also raise concerns about Mr. Homan’s known ties to private companies that profit from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contracts. The documents cite that after his first tenure as Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the first Trump Administration, Homan’s financial disclosures showed he received “substantial consulting fees” from The GEO Group, a major private detention center contractor.
The senators also highlight that since his appointment as White House border czar, Homan has advocated for creating more than 107,000 detention beds, which would necessitate new detention center contracts, while making frequent visits to the Capitol to press lawmakers into passing over $100 billion in funding for migrant detention and removal that Trump signed into law on July 4.
MY TAKE: Release the Homan tapes. Duh.
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