After nearly a decade of hoaxes — from Russiagate to Ukraine, from impeachment sagas to the circus around Brett Kavanaugh — the American public has been conditioned to expect another “bombshell” headline every few months. Now, right on schedule, a new one has emerged. This time, the target is Tom Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and now the border security czar in the Trump administration.
MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig reported on Saturday that Homan had supposedly been ensnared in a sting operation run by the Biden-era Department of Justice and FBI in 2024. According to their story, undercover FBI agents posed as business executives seeking help in obtaining border security contracts. MSNBC claimed Homan accepted “$50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration.”
Those are MSNBC’s exact words: “indicated he could help.” Not “said,” not “confirmed,” not “promised,” not “agreed.” Just “indicated.” That slipperiness alone should set off alarm bells. In legal and journalistic terms, it means nothing. At its most generous, it could be seen as a subjective impression. More realistically, it appears to be a deliberate attempt to insinuate wrongdoing without citing any evidence.
Tellingly, MSNBC’s story contains no direct quotes from Homan at all. When it references the alleged recording of his interactions with undercover agents, it only says that “hidden cameras [were] recording the scene at a meeting spot in Texas.” There is no transcript, no quotations, and no evidence of what Homan actually said. If Homan had said anything remotely incriminating, MSNBC would right now be airing it on a loop.
Perhaps the most glaring problem with the story is that if Tom Homan really had done anything wrong, why didn’t the Biden DOJ bring charges? This wasn’t Trump’s Justice Department in 2024. It was Merrick Garland’s DOJ and Christopher Wray’s FBI. If they had any evidence that Homan took a bribe or engaged in corruption, they would have prosecuted him instantly and with fanfare, especially given his reputation as one of the toughest immigration enforcers in the country.
Instead, the file was carried over into the Trump administration, where, according to a statement issued by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, it was “subjected to a full review by FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors” before being closed. That should have been the end of it. Yet someone has now leaked this non-story to MSNBC to create yet another hoax.
Which brings us to the messenger: Ken Dilanian.
Dilanian’s reputation in Washington is notorious. During the Russiagate years, he earned the nickname “Fusion Ken” for his uncanny habit of publishing exactly the kind of stories Fusion GPS, the Clinton-funded smear shop behind the Steele dossier, wanted in print. Discovery in lawsuits after the collapse of the collusion hoax uncovered emails showing Fusion GPS directing journalists to run stories, sometimes even giving them the exact framing to use. While Dilanian’s name did not appear in those specific exchanges, his track record speaks for itself. He was one of the most reliable megaphones for whatever narrative Clinton operatives wanted out there.
And that’s not all. Dilanian also sent draft articles to CIA officials for prepublication approval, even offering to make edits based on the agency’s feedback. In other words, he has literally acted as a mouthpiece for the intelligence community.
Given that record, the decision to launder this non-story about Homan through Dilanian tells us a lot about its credibility. If there had been real evidence — actual bribery, genuine corruption — the leak would have gone to a serious reporter. Instead, it was handed to Dilanian, whose reputation is so compromised that even casual news consumers know to treat his reporting as notoriously unreliable.
This raises a deeper question: How many other potential Trump appointees were targeted in similar “preemptive” sting operations? Was the Biden DOJ laying traps for people they thought might join a second Trump administration? And how many of those operations, like this one, produced nothing, yet remain sitting in FBI files, waiting to be dusted off and leaked to a friendly reporter when politically useful?
Even leaving politics aside, MSNBC’s so-called sting collapses on basic legal grounds.
First, undercover government agents cannot legally be considered co-conspirators. That means if all that happened was undercover FBI agents paying Homan a retainer and engaging in vague conversations about future help, there is no conspiracy.
Second, Homan at the time owned a private consulting company that specialized in advising clients on how to navigate the federal contracting process in immigration matters. That was his job. After he became border czar in 2025, he shut down his company. Accepting retainers to provide consulting services in that field was entirely legitimate. A retainer is not a bribe. It is a common business practice, a prepayment against services to be rendered. In many industries, retainers run well above $50,000. The mere existence of a retainer agreement proves nothing about intent to commit wrongdoing.
Third, timing matters. Homan did not hold public office when this alleged payment was made. He had no power to award contracts and no ability to influence the government on behalf of a client. The only scenario in which this could even plausibly have become a legal issue would be if, once back in government, he had secretly used his position to steer contracts to a company because of that prior payment. Yet not only is there no evidence of this, MSNBC does not even allege that such a thing ever happened.
Fourth, MSNBC’s spin on the supposed “cash” payment is laughable. There is nothing illegal about cash transactions. Businesses across America routinely use cash for retainers, deposits, and consulting fees. Lawyers, contractors, and consultants often accept retainers in cash, for example, when clients operate in cash-based economies, or so that an initial in-person meeting avoids the need for a bank transfer. Unless the money is tied to illicit activity or unreported for tax purposes, the method of payment is irrelevant. If anything, the fact that the FBI agents themselves insisted on a cash payment raises the question of whether they were trying to create a false aura of corruption for dramatic effect.
In sum, there is no evidence that Homan agreed to anything improper, no evidence that he ever acted on behalf of anyone, and no evidence that he violated any law. No charges were brought. The entire “scandal” rests on a single MSNBC story, built on vague wording and insinuation.
Americans should see this for what it is: another desperate attempt to destroy a Trump ally with innuendo. If the worst that can be said is that Tom Homan once accepted a retainer in his private capacity while running a consultancy business, then this entire episode deserves nothing but ridicule. Short of any earth-shattering new revelation, this is nothing more than yet another hoax.