Top US official accepted $50,000 bribe, but Trump’s administration stopped probe

A top US official, Tom Homan, was caught accepting a $50,000 cash bribe in exchange for facilitating government contracts for business executives in an undercover investigation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a report by MSNBC has shown.

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Mr Homan, the White House border czar responsible for co-piloting the present administration’s immigration crackdown, was caught in an operation conducted in September last year.

The operation was conducted during the Joe Biden administration, a few months before President Donald Trump resumed office.

At the time, Mr Homan simply worked as the president of a private consulting business. However, he had allegedly begun claiming that he could help companies in the border security industry win government contracts upon Mr Trump’s return to the White House.

He was often in the company of Mr Trump and had been a part of the campaign trail in 2023 and 2024 before his election.

Mr Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the start of Mr Trump’s first term, had said he anticipated leading the rollout of Mr Trump’s immigration policies.

“Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen,” he had said at the National Conservatism Conference in July 2024.

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The undercover agents had interacted several times with Mr Homan before eventually setting up a meeting where he was taped accepting a cash bribe.

At the meeting spot in Texas, the agents had planted hidden cameras to record the scene.

The MSNBC reports that an internal document containing the summary of the investigation, which It reviewed, showed that after the meeting, the FBI planned to continue monitoring Mr Homan to see if he would deliver on his alleged promise.

The FBI was also considering pursuing criminal charges upon completing their investigation.

They are, however, unable to continue the investigation or prosecute Mr Homan as the case was shut down after Mr Trump returned to office.

Investigation shut down

Officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity disclosed to MSNBC that several FBI and Justice Department officials believed they had a solid criminal case against Mr Homan.

This was for conspiracy to commit bribery, citing recordings of him accepting cash and the pledge to help with contracts.

However, the case was suspended shortly after Mr Trump resumed office. In February, it was completely shut down over concerns that the case was a “deep state” probe.

While both the FBI and Justice Department failed to provide a clear reason for shutting down the case, MSNBC reported that the FBI Director, Kash Patel, an appointee of Mr Trump, said there was no credible evidence of any criminal action.

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“This matter originated under the previous administration and was subjected to a full review by FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.”

The White House Deputy Press Secretary, Abigail Jackson, also criticised the probe as a political investigation short of credible evidence.

She described this as “an example of how the Biden Department of Justice was using its resources to target President Trump’s allies rather than investigate real criminals and the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our country.”

But MSNBC reported that officials who were part of the investigation believed that they had enough to charge Mr Homan at the time.

They, however, chose to continue monitoring him instead, given that he was not a government official at the time he accepted this payment.

His actions didn’t clearly fit under a standard bribery charge.

Before the case was dropped, the document reviewed by MSNBC indicated that the Justice Department was weighing four possible criminal charges against him.

These charges are: conspiracy, bribery, and two separate types of fraud.