Devlin Barrett

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 and to Tom Holman.

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.

And this case that the agents and investigators thought was a very solid case, a very promising start, it just gets closed.

So when we asked the Justice Department to explain, you know, why was this case closed, the FBI director, Kash Patel, and the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that, you know, it was reviewed by agents and prosecutors.

And 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, 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 all this is the White House press secretary, Carolyn Leavitt.

Denying that he took the money at all.

Tom Homan goes on Fox News, and he's given an opportunity to just respond to the reporting, respond to these allegations.

And his answer is very telling in one way, in that he never denies taking the money.

He repeats very emphatically that he didn't commit any crime.

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 kind of mantra throughout the administration as the questions keep coming up.

Last week, there's a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in which Attorney General Pam Bondi is very confrontational.