House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is calling on the Trump administration to reopen a Justice Department investigation into Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, following reports that he had accepted thousands of dollars from undercover FBI agents last year.
Responding to Trump’s recent call for the Justice Department to escalate investigations of his political opponents, including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former FBI Director James Comey, Jeffries said there’s “zero basis” that those figures have engaged in wrongdoing.
Jeffries said the agency’s focus would be better spent examining Homan, who had reportedly been under investigation for accepting a huge cash payment in what was allegedly a pay-to-play scheme before he joined Trump’s second term.
“If they want to prosecute or investigate anyone, start with Tom Homan and the fact that he appears to have taken a $50,000 bribe,” Jeffries said in an interview with CNN on Monday. “But they want to sweep those charges under the table to allow this guy to continue to unleash mass ICE agents on the American people.”
Homan, who is leading Trump’s immigration crackdown, was the subject of an explosive MSNBC News report published on Saturday, which said that Homan had been under investigation by the Biden-era Department of Justice (DOJ) after accepting $50,000 in cash last year from FBI agents posing as businessmen. In return, Homan had promised to provide government contracts to the men in Trump’s second term, according to the report.
Top DOJ officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, gave a statement to MSNBC suggesting that the investigation into Homan was untrustworthy because it was initially launched by the agency under former President Biden. A subsequent examination by the agency under Trump, they added, found “no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing” and the probe was dropped.
Homan has also denied the allegations, calling them “bull—-.”
Hours after the report was published, Trump posted on Truth Social, his social-media company, urging U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to step up the DOJ’s investigations into the president’s political foes. He singled out Schiff, Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James as deserving particular scrutiny.
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump posted. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
Jeffries, a long-time Trump critic, said the president and the DOJ are weaponizing the agency by cherry-picking the targets of their investigations, going after political adversaries while whitewashing potential criminal wrongdoing by allies like Homan.
“This is all a political witch hunt being led by a president who is bent on revenge,” Jeffries said.
Jeffries also vowed that Democrats in Congress will launch their own investigations into Homan “because Republicans haven’t been functioning as a separate and co-equal branch of government.”
“We are not going to wait until we take the majority back in November of next year,” he said. “We’re going to launch these investigations now and make sure — just as we’ve done in the case of the Epstein files — that we can present the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the American people, and hold people publicly accountable for their behavior.”
