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A coalition of House and Senate Democrats has officially launched an investigation into Trump administration border czar Tom Homan, following revelations that he was recorded accepting a $50,000 cash payment from undercover FBI agents in a potential bribery scheme.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: In case you missed it, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has been accused of accepting a $50,000 cash bribe from undercover FBI agents in what investigators believed was a pay-to-play scheme involving future federal border security contracts. The FBI opened an investigation into Homan in September 2024 after agents in Texas, working on an unrelated counterintelligence case, received information that Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for influence over government contracts if Trump returned to office. Acting on the tip, FBI agents posing as businessmen arranged a meeting with Homan at a Cava restaurant, where he was reportedly recorded on both video and audio accepting a bag containing $50,000 in cash. In that meeting, Homan allegedly agreed to help the agents’ fictitious companies win federal contracts under a future Trump administration. The investigation was abruptly dropped in early 2025 after Trump’s return to office and the appointment of Kash Patel as FBI Director. Patel reportedly ordered the case closed despite ongoing prosecutorial interest. Homan has publicly dismissed the allegations as “bullshit,” denying any criminal conduct.

What’s going on now: Democrats in both chambers of Congress are moving quickly to investigate the circumstances surrounding the dropped case against Homan and the alleged bribery itself. Led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrats are demanding that the Justice Department and FBI turn over all recordings, evidence, and internal communications related to the Homan sting. In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, Raskin and committee Democrats wrote: “Confirmed by six sources and reportedly captured on recordings now in DOJ and FBI’s possession, this startling episode is powerful evidence that Mr. Homan may have committed multiple federal felonies, including conspiracy to commit bribery.” They accused DOJ leadership of shutting down the case in an attempt to shield Trump’s allies, calling it “a brazen cover-up” and an “untenable situation.”

The investigations go beyond the cash exchange itself. Democrats are also digging into whether Homan was using his influence to steer billions in federal funding toward private contractors, particularly GEO Group, a company he previously consulted for. In an August letter, Judiciary Democrats flagged that “many of these payments have gone to private contractors, including Mr. Homan’s former client GEO Group,” and raised concerns that he may have been “selling these contracts for personal profit before he even had the power to award them.”

The Homeland Security Committee, led by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), is examining whether $170 billion in border enforcement funding under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” may have been influenced by Homan’s relationships with contractors.

Despite growing calls to release the FBI’s recordings of the alleged cash handoff, the Trump White House is pushing back hard. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that “Mr. Homan never took the $50,000”, adding that reporters “should get your facts straight.”