Over the weekend, it came out that Tom Homan, one of the senior architects of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, allegedly took $50K from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives hoping to bribe their way into government contracts if Trump won. He’s said to have accepted the funds — which the FBI reportedly captured on video — in a Cava bag. If the fast food chain doesn’t immediately capitalize on this with some sort of marketing campaign, then I’ve lost all faith in them.
Homan, interestingly enough, put himself front-and-center of the move to drop the Eric Adams bribery case. Homan never came across as the proper spokesperson for the administration’s decision, highlighted when he seemed to confirm a quid pro quo for dropping the Adams case, but in retrospect, he might have had a vested interest in putting out the message that bribery isn’t anything to be ashamed of.
Lots of people are talking about this story and its implications for the rule of law, with some comparing the overarching investigation as a modern-day Teapot Dome scandal, but Above the Law has a more quotidian query: seriously, what happened to the money? If the FBI gave away $50,000 and then dropped the case… what happened to it? Where is this taxpayer money?
I get that the administration declared this a “deep state” probe — the exact words of a Trump Justice Department appointee according to NBC sources — and decided to punt the investigation, but… is the money still out there? Did they tell Tom that he was wrongfully investigated, but can we please get back our honeypot? They couldn’t really be allowing him to keep it… right?
Why is everyone focused on whether or not this was really a crime and not on the money?
You should not listen to Kurt and Megyn generally, but you should definitely not listen to people who don’t seem to have the vaguest sense of how the Justice Department functions. First of all, the FBI was involved in a broader, ongoing investigation and doesn’t make it a habit of charging people at the drop of a hat until they’re sure they’ve uncovered the full scope of the enterprise. But more to the point, the DOJ was never going to charge a senior individual in Trump’s orbit in September of 2024, because no matter how good of a case they think they have, the DOJ generally doesn’t take actions that might impact an election mere weeks away.
This is the complaint that liberals have with James Comey reopening the Hillary email debacle on the cusp of the 2016 election. Which isn’t necessarily fair to Comey, who painted himself into a corner when he made the well-intentioned, if ill-advised, decision over that summer to testify under oath that the FBI had reviewed every single email and found no criminality. At that point he kind of had to inform Congress when new emails emerged, and even though he signaled that those emails were likely irrelevant — which was ultimately true — the damage was done.
Possibly chastened by that experience, the DOJ was absolutely, positively not going to make a public accusation that the Trump campaign was involved in a massive bribery scheme in September of an election year.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson slammed the probe as a “blatantly political investigation, which found no evidence of illegal activity, is yet another example of how the Biden Department of Justice was using it’s resources to target President Trump’s allies rather than investigate real criminals and the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our country.”
“Tom Homan has not been involved with any contract award decisions. He is a career law enforcement officer and lifelong public servant who is doing a phenomenal job on behalf of President Trump and the country,” she added on behalf of Homan, a senior White House employee.
OK, but that’s not denying that there was an investigation — indeed, it confirms that there was one — and it’s certainly not a denial that the investigation included money handed to Homan. Maybe they meant to deny that he ever took $50K in a Cava bag, but that’s not what these answers are saying. So even if we accept these White House responses at face value and decide that this was a bad case, we’re still left out here wondering… where the hell is that money? Did he report it on his taxes? Now that this is public, can someone in the IRS check?
Alas, this is an administration that lost hundreds of kids the first time around, and then claimed they misplaced several guys in El Salvador. Maybe we should just accept that they’re never going to find that money.
The post Seriously Though, Did Tom Homan Keep The $50,000 The FBI Gave Him? appeared first on Above the Law.
Over the weekend, it came out that Tom Homan, one of the senior architects of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, allegedly took $50K from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives hoping to bribe their way into government contracts if Trump won. He’s said to have accepted the funds — which the FBI reportedly captured on video — in a Cava bag. If the fast food chain doesn’t immediately capitalize on this with some sort of marketing campaign, then I’ve lost all faith in them.
Homan, interestingly enough, put himself front-and-center of the move to drop the Eric Adams bribery case. Homan never came across as the proper spokesperson for the administration’s decision, highlighted when he seemed to confirm a quid pro quo for dropping the Adams case, but in retrospect, he might have had a vested interest in putting out the message that bribery isn’t anything to be ashamed of.
Lots of people are talking about this story and its implications for the rule of law, with some comparing the overarching investigation as a modern-day Teapot Dome scandal, but Above the Law has a more quotidian query: seriously, what happened to the money? If the FBI gave away $50,000 and then dropped the case… what happened to it? Where is this taxpayer money?
I get that the administration declared this a “deep state” probe — the exact words of a Trump Justice Department appointee according to NBC sources — and decided to punt the investigation, but… is the money still out there? Did they tell Tom that he was wrongfully investigated, but can we please get back our honeypot? They couldn’t really be allowing him to keep it… right?
Why is everyone focused on whether or not this was really a crime and not on the money?
You should not listen to Kurt and Megyn generally, but you should definitely not listen to people who don’t seem to have the vaguest sense of how the Justice Department functions. First of all, the FBI was involved in a broader, ongoing investigation and doesn’t make it a habit of charging people at the drop of a hat until they’re sure they’ve uncovered the full scope of the enterprise. But more to the point, the DOJ was never going to charge a senior individual in Trump’s orbit in September of 2024, because no matter how good of a case they think they have, the DOJ generally doesn’t take actions that might impact an election mere weeks away.
This is the complaint that liberals have with James Comey reopening the Hillary email debacle on the cusp of the 2016 election. Which isn’t necessarily fair to Comey, who painted himself into a corner when he made the well-intentioned, if ill-advised, decision over that summer to testify under oath that the FBI had reviewed every single email and found no criminality. At that point he kind of had to inform Congress when new emails emerged, and even though he signaled that those emails were likely irrelevant — which was ultimately true — the damage was done.
Possibly chastened by that experience, the DOJ was absolutely, positively not going to make a public accusation that the Trump campaign was involved in a massive bribery scheme in September of an election year.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson slammed the probe as a “blatantly political investigation, which found no evidence of illegal activity, is yet another example of how the Biden Department of Justice was using it’s resources to target President Trump’s allies rather than investigate real criminals and the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our country.”
“Tom Homan has not been involved with any contract award decisions. He is a career law enforcement officer and lifelong public servant who is doing a phenomenal job on behalf of President Trump and the country,” she added on behalf of Homan, a senior White House employee.
OK, but that’s not denying that there was an investigation — indeed, it confirms that there was one — and it’s certainly not a denial that the investigation included money handed to Homan. Maybe they meant to deny that he ever took $50K in a Cava bag, but that’s not what these answers are saying. So even if we accept these White House responses at face value and decide that this was a bad case, we’re still left out here wondering… where the hell is that money? Did he report it on his taxes? Now that this is public, can someone in the IRS check?
Alas, this is an administration that lost hundreds of kids the first time around, and then claimed they misplaced several guys in El Salvador. Maybe we should just accept that they’re never going to find that money.
