FBI Director Patel and Deputy AG Blanche confirmed closure of Homan bribery sting probe, called it 'baseless investigation'

On September 21, 2025, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche jointly confirmed to ABC News that the Department of Justice had closed a federal bribery probe into Tom Homan, the White House's border enforcement czar and the administration's chief immigration official. The investigation had been inherited from the Biden administration and was predicated on undercover FBI recordings of Homan allegedly accepting a bag containing $50,000 in cash while agreeing to help the undercover agents obtain government contracts if Donald Trump won the 2024 election. Patel and Blanche publicly called the investigation a "baseless investigation" and stated it had found "no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing."

The probe had been effectively shelved earlier in Trump's second term when Emil Bove, then acting as a senior DOJ official in the early weeks of the administration, informed career prosecutors that he did not support pursuing the investigation. Bove's intervention ended the operational work of the probe before Patel and Blanche's September statement gave it an official public burial. The public confirmation on September 21 represented a deliberate choice by two senior presidential appointees — both installed by the president whose border czar was the probe's subject — to place their institutional authority behind the decision to close the case and publicly discredit the investigation.

The probe was predicated on undercover recordings, not an informant's allegation alone. By publicly characterizing it as "baseless" without citing specific exculpatory evidence, Patel and Blanche placed the institutional authority of the Justice Department and FBI behind a decision that insulated a presidential ally from accountability. The public defense of the closure — beyond simply declining to pursue the case — converted the DOJ's public communications apparatus into a shield for a sitting White House official.