White House denies Homan took bag of cash in FBI inquiry

A White House spokesperson denied Monday that the president’s border czar, Tom Homan, accepted a bag with $50,000 in cash as part of an undercover FBI investigation last September, contradicting news reports about the case.

FBI agents working undercover made an audio recording of the September 2024 meeting in which Homan accepted the money in a bag from the fast-food chain Cava, The New York Times reported Saturday.

In the recording, he appeared to agree to try to help the agents posing as businessmen get lucrative federal contracts related to border security in a possible second Trump administration, according to people who requested anonymity to describe details of the case.

The investigation was closed by the Trump Justice Department this year, frustrating some of the people who worked on it, these people said.

Asked by reporters what happened to the money Homan received, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt on Monday rejected the published accounts and said President Donald Trump remained fully supportive of his border czar.

“Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you’re referring to,” Leavitt said. “This was another example of the 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.”

She said the FBI agents had gone undercover to “entrap one of the president’s top allies and supporters, someone who they knew very well would be taking a government position months later.”

The president and his staff “stand by Tom Homan 100%, because he did absolutely nothing wrong, and he is a brave public servant,” Leavitt said.

Homan did not respond to requests for comment over the weekend. Administration officials have said that he has not been involved with any decisions on awarding contracts.

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