The Border Czar and a Bag of $50,000
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This is Andrew Ross Sorkin, the founder of Dealbook. Every year, I interview some of the world's most influential leaders across politics, culture, and business at the Dealbook Summit, a live event in New York City. On this year's podcast, you'll hear my unfiltered conversations with Gavin Newsom, the CEO of Palantir and Anthropic, and Erica Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk. Listen to Dealbook Summit wherever you get your podcasts.
From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittroff. This is The Daily.
The White House border czar Tom Holman was recorded on an FBI surveillance tape in September 2024, accepting $50,000 in cash. Did he keep that money or give it back?
For the past few weeks, Trump officials have been asked repeatedly about an undercover FBI investigation of border czar Tom Holman.
What became of the $50,000 in cash that the FBI delivered to Mr. Holman?
And consistently, they've sidestepped. Did he accept that $50,000 or not?
George, I don't know what you're talking about. Did he accept $50,000 for what?
Or refuse to answer key questions.
Did the FBI get it back?
Senator Whitehouse, you're welcome to talk to the FBI.
About whether one of Trump's top immigration officials brazenly broke the law and what's being done about it.
The White House and the president stand by Tom Homan 100% because he did absolutely nothing wrong.
Today, my colleague Devlin Barrett on the story behind those questions and why the Tom Homan scandal hasn't faded away. It's Wednesday, October 15th.
Devlin, I've been watching this story of these allegations surrounding Tom Homan unfold over the past several weeks. And as I've watched, I keep thinking about this interview I did with Homan on the show in June. One thing that really stuck with me from that interview was just how uncompromising Homan was in the way he presented his view of the law and what should happen to people who break it, that they should be punished. And I want to just play you a little bit of tape about how he represented himself and that mission.
We're nice from laws, right? We got to enforce the laws. Entering this country legally is a crime. We don't pick and choose what we enforce. We're here to enforce the law.
And then recently, we got some new information about Holman. Tell us when you first learned about this story.
So I cover the Justice Department and the FBI. And months ago, I had started hearing rumblings that there had been some kind of bribery investigation related to Tom Holman. But I couldn't quite figure out what it was about or where it was. And for a while, it just was a puzzle I couldn't solve.
You had a lot of other stories you were covering.
It's pretty busy at the DOJ and the FBI most days. Then sometime in September, I got a little more information where someone knew some of the answers to these questions and said, you know, oh, you mean the case with a bag of cash?
Whoa, bag of cash. That's a pretty big tip.
Well, right.
What is the FBI investigation involving Tom Homan about?
That's not, you know, what you would think of as like, let's call it regular business practice, right? It's almost the stereotypical way that people think of corruption cases.
Yeah.
So from that point, I started putting more pieces together and figuring more things out. I wasn't the only reporter chasing corruption. This MSNBC also figured it out. And so what I eventually came to understand was that there had been beginning really in 2023, but stretching all the way into this year, a really fascinating investigation that came to include Tom Holman. As it's been described to me by sources, if you go back to the spring of 2023, the FBI in Texas was conducting an undercover investigation related to a particular businessman. And the investigation, my sources were adamant, was not looking at Tom Holman at all. But in the course of that investigation, that businessman told the undercover agents that
If those agents who are posing as businessmen looking for government contracts, if they were willing to pay Tom Holman a million dollars, he could steer government contracts to them.
So these agents weren't initially fishing for anything related to Tom Holman.
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