A government watchdog group called the Democracy Defenders Fund has filed suit against the FBI, seeking to force the release of a tape and related files that reportedly show border czar Tom Homan accepting a $50,000 cash payment from an undercover FBI agent. The FBI had denied the group's Freedom of Information Act request, citing privacy protections for personal information in law enforcement records.
The lawsuit lands in the middle of a story built almost entirely on the word "reportedly." No named law enforcement source has confirmed the tape's contents on the record. The FBI has not commented. And the investigation itself was dropped after President Trump took office.
That context matters.
According to The Hill, the FBI conducted an undercover operation after receiving a tip that Homan was accepting cash payments in exchange for helping companies secure government contracts. An FBI agent reportedly approached Homan before Trump won the election, and the exchange was allegedly captured on tape, with the cash delivered in a Cava bag.
The suit claims law enforcement assembled what they believed was a strong case and were considering four different charges against Homan prior to Trump taking office. The Democracy Defenders Fund's filing put it bluntly:
"Despite the officials' belief in the strength of their case, after President Trump took office, the FBI absurdly decided to drop the investigation."
The group argues that "the strong public interest outweighs any privacy interest in the documents" and that the American public deserves to evaluate both Homan's actions and the FBI's decision to close the case. Their suit frames it this way:
"These documents contain vital information that the American public needs to have in order to assess both Mr. Homan's potentially corrupt actions as well as the Department of Justice and FBI's potentially politically motivated decision to drop the investigation into Mr. Homan, one of the Trump Administration's appointees."
Homan has not been silent on this. He appeared on Fox News and addressed the matter directly:
"Look, I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal. It's hit piece after hit piece after hit piece and I'm glad the FBI and DOJ came out and said, you know, said that nothing illegal happened, no criminal activity."
The Hill noted, however, that when the story first surfaced in a September report by MSNOW, Homan said he "did nothing criminal" but did not specifically deny taking the $50,000 cash payment. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, by contrast, asserted that Homan never took the money at all. No direct quote from Leavitt was provided in The Hill's reporting, so the exact language and context of her denial remain unclear.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson offered the most detailed defense last year:
"This blatantly political investigation, which found no evidence of illegal activity, is yet another example of how the Biden Department of Justice was using its resources to target President Trump's allies rather than investigate real criminals and the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our country."
Jackson also emphasized that Homan "has not been involved with any contract award decisions" and called him "a career law enforcement officer and lifelong public servant who is doing a phenomenal job on behalf of President Trump and the country."
Two stories are competing for attention here, and a conservative audience should be clear-eyed about both.
The first is the surface-level allegation. A tape reportedly exists. Cash was reportedly exchanged. Charges were reportedly considered. That is a lot of "reportedly" doing a lot of heavy lifting. No named source has gone on the record. The FBI itself has said nothing publicly. The organization filing the lawsuit, the Democracy Defenders Fund, receives no background treatment in any of the available reporting. We don't know who funds it, who runs it, or what its track record looks like. That is nothing.
The second story is more familiar. The Biden-era DOJ had a well-documented pattern of using its investigative apparatus against Trump allies. The White House's characterization of this as a "blatantly political investigation" fits within a pattern that Americans watched play out for years. That pattern does not automatically make every accusation false, but it does demand scrutiny of timing, sourcing, and motive.
Consider the sequence: the FBI opens an undercover operation targeting a known Trump ally, assembles what it considers a case, and then the investigation evaporates once the political winds shift. Either the case was strong and was dropped for improper reasons, or the case was weak and was being sustained for improper reasons. Both possibilities deserve investigation. Neither is served by breathless coverage built on anonymous sourcing.
Here is where things get uncomfortable for everyone. If the tape exonerates Homan, releasing it ends the story. If the FBI dropped a legitimate case for political reasons, the public should know that too. Conservatives who spent years demanding accountability from the FBI cannot suddenly discover a fondness for opacity when the subject is an ally.
The strongest position is the simplest one: release the materials. If Homan did nothing wrong, the tape proves it. If the FBI was weaponized under Biden, the investigative files prove that. Sunlight is the argument conservatives have been making about federal law enforcement for the better part of a decade. It doesn't stop applying because the subject changed.
The FBI's refusal to comment, combined with its invocation of privacy protections to deny the FOIA request, does nothing to quiet the questions. Silence from the bureau that spent years leaking to reporters when it suited the previous administration's interests is its own kind of statement.
Whatever is on that tape, the American public is better off seeing it than speculating about it.