President Donald Trump's border czar Tom Homan is facing backlash following reports released Saturday that revealed he was investigated by the FBI for allegedly accepting a $50,000 cash payment from undercover agents posing as business executives. The investigation, initiated in 2024, was ultimately closed by Trump administration officials earlier this year due to a lack of "credible evidence" of criminal wrongdoing.
Conservative commentator Sarah Longwell sharply reacted to the news, calling the lack of accountability “insane” and saying the scandal is emblematic of broader corruption in the Trump orbit.
During a podcast on The Bulwark Saturday, she argued that the entire “ecosystem around Trump sells influence,” noting that people close to Trump often profit simply by being close, promising to deliver favors or contracts if he wins, regardless of whether they hold formal office. She said it mirrors what she sees as “downstream corruption” from Trump — from countries offering bribes, to premium‑clubs run by his children — and that in Homan’s case, it shows how normalized these kinds of allegations have become.
Longwell noted that Homan has been a controversial figure in the administration.
"If this were just some unnamed member of the Trump administration, people would probably be like, yep, they’re all corrupt. But in this case, this guy is... like one of the biggest villains in the Trump administration."
She continued: "He is the architect of going and yanking people off the streets, of sending people to torture prisons, even when they’re innocent. Like that’s this guy. And so knives will be out forever for this guy. And rightly so. He has been terrible from the beginning. He has never made even an ounce of an attempt to act like he is going to work through the immigration process in sort of a lawful, humane way. He has been clear from the jump he was going to be as inhumane and destructive as possible as he did this. And so it doesn’t strike me one bit that this is not a good person. And that it is the kind of person who was taking old school bribes," she added.
The Bulwark's Tim Miller added that what distinguishes this scandal is its relative simplicity. He said the Homan case, essentially accepting a bag of cash in exchange for promising favors, is the sort of corruption most people can immediately grasp.
Miller contrasted it with more abstract or technical issues like crypto, stablecoins, or AI regulation, which tend to lose people’s attention.
"I do wonder if that the simplicity of it is going to mean that there is a greater firestorm around this than there’s been around the crypto stuff," he added.