Expanding on her bombshell report that Donald Trump’s foot-dragging on administration appointments led to Tom Homan being elevated to border czar despite being caught up in a bribery investigation, MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig reported on-air that FBI Director Kash Patel and now-federal Judge Emil Bove were not happy about the situation.
Leonnig reported Tuesday that Homan was caught dead to rights in an FBI bribery sting accepting $50,000 after a former associate told undercover agents the former Border Patrol official was open to payoffs.
As she wrote, Trump transition officials were not given the information in a timely manner because the president-elect blocked FBI background checks, and Bove was eventually handed a one-page document revealing the information days before the inauguration, at which point he “closed his eyes and grimaced.”
FBI officials had been “champing at the bit” to divulge the information, Leonnig said, assuming that the eventual Trump administration official would never be granted a security clearance.
“It's super significant because basically when the Trump transition team learns this in mid-January, it's a Trump transition official named Emil Bove, who goes on to become the deputy attorney general, acting deputy attorney general, in those first few months of the administration,” she reported. “And he is handed an envelope with a one-page summary that says, ‘Hey, this is the evidence we have involving Tom Homan appearing to solicit bribes or participating in taking bribes.’”
In her earlier report she noted that Bove and Patel were very unhappy about the information and let it be known.
“FBI Director Kash Patel was briefed on the investigation soon after being confirmed for his post, according to the two sources,” she wrote before adding, “Both Patel and Bove registered their displeasure with the investigation and the case stalled out, without taking any more formal investigative steps. After Patel sought an update briefing this summer, the FBI closed the investigation.”
You can read her report here