Donald Trump fires a federal prosecutor for not persecuting his opponents quickly enough, then posts a public message to his attorney general telling her which of his former personal attorneys will be a better fit for the job. Meanwhile, news breaks that a top Trump adviser accepted a $50,000 cash bribe last year in an FBI sting while promising favorable treatment by the new administration—an administration which went on to hire him anyway and spike the ongoing FBI investigation.
If the Justice Department’s reputation has ever suffered a bigger single-weekend hit, we couldn’t think of when. Happy Monday.
Bag Man
by William Kristol
Who uses cash anymore? Tom Homan, that’s who. On September 20, 2024, Trump’s border czar accepted $50,000 from undercover FBI agents. And no, it wasn’t Venmoed. The cash was in a bag from the food chain Cava. (Since you asked: I’m partial to the Spicy Lamb + Avocado combo. But I haven’t yet tried the newly minted Garlicky Chicken Shawarma Bowl. Morning Shots readers, let me know how it is in the comments).
The story broke Saturday afternoon in a detailed and well-sourced MSNBC News report by star investigative reporter Carol Leonnig, a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner who left the Washington Post less than two months ago, and Ken Dilanian, who has covered the Justice Department and the intelligence agencies for NBC and MSNBC for a decade.
Here’s the heart of the story:
In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, accepting $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, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC.
The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation’s top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled soon after Donald Trump became president again in January, according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation, after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the case, two of the people said.
The federal investigation was launched in western Texas in the summer of 2024 after a subject in a separate investigation claimed Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election, according to an internal Justice Department summary of the probe reviewed by MSNBC and people familiar with the case. The U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Texas, working with the FBI, asked the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section to join its ongoing probe “into the Border Czar and former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan and others based on evidence of payment from FBI undercover agents in exchange for facilitating future contracts related to border enforcement.”
Remarkably, the Trump Justice Department isn’t actually denying the cash payment or any other fact reported by Leonnig and Dilanian. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche simply asserted that their review of the case “found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.”
A New York Times report soon followed up on MSNBC’s story, adding the fun Cava bag detail and also the intriguing fact that the sting “grew out of a long-running counterintelligence investigation that had not been targeting Mr. Homan.” In other words, the Biden Justice Department was not out to get Homan.
The main fact that now seems to be in question—beyond who was the target of the counterintelligence investigation—is what kind of recording of the Homan exchange with the undercover agents exists. The Times reported that Homan’s encounter was “recorded on audiotape.” MSNBC reported that there were hidden cameras. Does the Justice Department have audiotape or videotape? Will this be a docuseries, or are we to expect this to be told in podcast form?
National Review magazine—a big fan of Homan’s deportation policies—had to acknowledge that “What’s reported sounds bad.” And while earnestly stipulating that “We can’t evaluate the case against Homan until we know what was said in the recording, why he took the money (if he did), and why the transaction was in cash,” the magazine did say that “Congress should look into this.”
Don’t hold your breath. Republicans control Congress.
But Democrats should apply all the pressure they can. And even without formal congressional action, it shouldn’t be that hard to keep on the heat.
There are so many obvious questions: Can we hear or see the tapes? Did Homan keep the money? Who did he think he was meeting with? Is the $50,000 reported on this 2024 tax return? Were there other such payments? Has “Border Czar” Homan ever placed a call to the White House to ICE or DHS in order to discuss the massive number of contracts being doled out over there? And of course: Did he actually order anything from Cava and if so, what?
And what about the coverup? Who exactly made the decision to squash the case? Was that DOJ’s decision discussed with the White House? Was it okayed by the White House? Was it ordered by the White House? Was it ordered by the president, who after all seems to take considerable personal interest in the question of who is prosecuted and not by his Justice Department?
Now, it’s true that $50,000 is peanuts in the Trump administration corruption sweepstakes. And the Justice Department is engaged in bigger coverups. Still, this is both a real case of corruption and coverup, and a colorful one.
As Cava says in its ads, “You shouldn’t have to choose substance over flavor.” This scandal has both.
A Tale of Two Speeches
by Andrew Egger
Attendees at Charlie Kirk’s massive memorial service at the Arizona Cardinals’ home stadium yesterday1 mostly got what they might have expected to get. There were a series of politics-and-religion eulogies from top GOP leaders, a series of performances from Christian praise bands, and, naturally, a totally out of place rally-style stump speech from Donald Trump.
They also witnessed a moment of remarkable hatred and a moment of remarkable grace.
The moment of hatred came early, and not from a surprising source. Stephen Miller has been on a remarkable tear since Kirk’s death, working harder than anyone else in government to lay the blame for the tragedy at the feet of the entire political left. But in his remarks at the service yesterday, he far surpassed even his own prior best efforts in sheer eye-popping spleen, delivering a manic harangue valorizing MAGA as God’s movement on earth and the left as cockroaches in need of a good squelching:
The light will defeat the dark. We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us. Because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.
And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.
On and on he went in this vein. It was a disturbing display of venom made a bit more shocking when one’s reminded that Miller is arguably the single most powerful person in America at the moment.
But this jeremiad was not the most remarkable moment of the day. That came later, when Erika Kirk—Charlie Kirk’s widow and now his successor as CEO of Turning Point USA—got up to speak. As she walked slowly to the podium, plainly beside herself with grief, you had to wonder whether she would even be able to hold herself together.
But she did. In her speech, Erika Kirk dwelt at length on her and her husband’s shared life and shared faith. She praised him as a husband and as a father. She talked about his concern for the lost young men of his generation, men “wasting their lives on distractions” and “consumed with resentment, anger, and hate.” He had wanted to reach them, she said. “He wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life.” And then she said this staggering thing:
That young man—I forgive him. I forgive him because it is what Christ did and it is what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.
If there’s anybody in the world who could be forgiven for wallowing in hatred less than two weeks after the Kirk assassination, it was this woman. Instead, she offered unconditional grace.
I have thought and thought, but I cannot reconcile how these two messages, Kirk’s and Miller’s, appeared on the same stage yesterday. They are not just in tension; they are diametrically opposed. One is rooted in a commitment to recognizing even one’s worst enemies as human beings with inherent value; the other is built on a fundamental belief that those enemies shouldn’t be seen as human at all. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing.
I have no illusions about which of these views holds more political power today. Erika Kirk will continue to grieve and will try to carry on her husband’s work in Arizona; Stephen Miller is already headed back to D.C. to get back to work smashing MAGA’s enemies from the West Wing. After Erika Kirk’s moment of transcendence, Donald Trump took the stage to make clear which side he falls on:
“He did not hate his enemies. He wanted the best for them,” Trump said of Kirk, reading from the teleprompter. Then he turned to the crowd for an ad-lib: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them. I’m sorry. I am sorry, Erika. But now Erika can talk to me, and the whole group, and maybe they can convince me that that’s not right. But I can’t stand my opponent.”
I’ve got my doubts that she’ll convince him. But maybe, hopefully, she’ll convince some others. That’s not nothing.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Beware Today’s ‘Fire-Eaters’... There are echoes in our political rhetoric of the men who helped talk the United States into civil war, observes GEN. MARK HERTLING.
Where Have All the Boycotts Gone? In The Opposition, LAUREN EGAN on Media Matters, the watchdog that didn’t bark after Kimmel was put on ice.
Russia Is Openly Attacking NATO… On Shield of the Republic, ERIC EDELMAN and ELIOT COHEN discuss Russian drone incursions into NATO airspace, Israel’s strike on Hamas leadership in Qatar, and the shifting priorities of the forthcoming National Defense Strategy.
RFK Jr. Has a Prescription for America: Pure Chaos… Last week offered the clearest picture yet of his plan on vaccines—and the damage it’s already causing, writes JONATHAN COHN in The Breakdown.
Goldman Calls Out Trump’s FBI Over Epstein Cover-Up… On How to Fix It, REP. DAN GOLDMAN joins JOHN AVLON to rip into the FBI’s Epstein cover-up, Trump’s attacks on free speech, and the GOP’s cowardice on health care and democracy.
Thirty Years Later, ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ Still Rides On… The iconic Lucy Lawless–led fantasy show still has legions of loyal fans, writes CATHY YOUNG. (“Love the Bulwark. Watch it every day on YouTube,” says Lawless!)
Quick Hits
ATTENTION LAW ENFORCEMENT!: ICE has a big bag of taxpayer money to spend hiring new agents. Now all they need is the agents themselves. One way they’re trying to build the ranks: convincing blue-city cops to switch jobs.
“Attention law enforcement!” begins the voiceover in an ad that began airing last month from Seattle to Sacramento to Denver. “You took an oath to protect and serve. To keep your family, your neighborhood, safe. But in too many cities, dangerous illegals walk free as police are forced to stand down. Join ICE and help us catch the worst of the worst.”
The “worst of the worst” messaging is a persistent through-line in ICE propaganda. This despite what’s grown obvious for months: ICE’s main mission is volume, vacuuming up day laborers and neighborhood mainstays in keeping with Stephen Miller’s publicly stated goal of 3,000 ICE arrests per day.
What the ad really stands out for, though, is its open appeal to cops who might feel that their police department’s own policies are too soft on the people they arrest. This is in keeping with Donald Trump’s own messaging about police—criminals, he likes to say, “fight back until you knock the hell out of them, ’cause it’s the only language they understand.” But it’s also a potential target for Democrats who want to make the case that Trump’s policies are pulling resources away from places where they’re actually needed. In this case, the president is literally trying to get your police officers to stop arresting criminals and start arresting landscapers!
H-1B FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE: The glue that unites today’s GOP is adulation of Donald Trump, contempt for the left, and little else. When it comes to policy, the party is rent by deep factional disagreements. One of the most interesting to watch this year has been the quarreling over H-1B visas. The populists want the White House to crack down on foreign high-skilled workers in America; the tech right, led by Elon Musk, think this would be a terrible idea.
On Friday, Trump came down for the populists. Going forward, he wrote in a presidential proclamation, any company seeking an H-1B visa for a foreign worker will have to pay a $100,000 fee. The policy, he said, would go into effect less than 48 hours later.
A mad scramble ensued, particularly since the wording of the proclamation (and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s presentation of it) made it unclear whether current visa holders would be affected if they were currently out of the country. There was also the provision that Trump could simply waive the fee in instances where he determined it was in the national interest. Nevertheless, the New York Times reported that H-1B employees at Microsoft, Amazon, and JPMorgan received notices Friday that said, essentially: If you’re not here now, get your ass back to America at once.
The administration later clarified that only future visa applicants will be affected. And legal challenges are already spinning up. For now, though, many workers are caught in limbo. Here’s the Times again:
Some workers who are currently abroad said they were unsure about how to immediately respond. A 29-year-old software engineer with a stamped H-1B visa set to begin in less than 20 days, was tucked into bed in his Munich apartment early Saturday when he realized he might be stuck in Germany.
Speaking before the government’s clarification on how the visa fee would be applied, the software engineer, who is an Indian citizen with a German work visa, said he felt “clueless” about how to proceed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was worried about his visa status.His company, he said, had told him to stay put.
In its email to employees on Friday evening, Microsoft, which has roughly 5,200 employees in the program, said that workers currently in the United States should remain there “for the foreseeable future,” even if it interrupts future travel plans.
“The critical thing is to stay in the U.S. in order to avoid being denied re-entry,” the advisory said.
Cheap Shots
Say what you will about Turning Point USA, those guys know how to put on an event—although people of good will might disagree about the maximum number of pyrotechnics you can tastefully fire off at a funeral.
“A tale of two speeches!”
Sorry, I’m not buying it; I have a completely different takeaway from this debacle of a memorial for a man least deserving of any honor.
Moreover, we all know where this administration stands; divide and conquer. Miller and Trump’s speeches were exactly as to be expected.
Erika, on the other hand is taking over as the leader of Turning Point USA, and she will be directed by the Whitehouse. She won’t be in control, even if she wanted to; she’ll be handled; the same way they handled Kirk when he was railing about the administration’s feckless attempt to hide the Epstein files.
If you truly want to know want she feels, she already said it in her first address to the public: “You have no idea what you have unleashed.” These people will always choose power over the true meaning of Christianity, and justify it in the name of Jesus.
And this memorial is just the beginning. They will turn Kirk into the reincarnation of MLK Jr., or Ghandi. He’s anything but. And Eirka has the same ideology as her husband. And you need to understand they have different messaging to the broader public than when they speak to their own constituents.
Additionally, just look at how they destroyed Jimmy Kimmel and hundreds of others, based on a lie, and have silenced any, and all opposition to Kirk’s hypocrisy.
Bottom line: He wasn’t a champion of free speech nor did he bring people together. He had his own brand of demagoguery; similar to James O”Keefe and Project Veritas; he wanted gotcha video clips he could use to own the libs and increase his standing in the evangelical movement or MAGA. Whenever Kirk was challenged at universities and couldn’t talk his way into victory, he deflected and changed the subject. End of story! IMHO…:)
I am a Christian, even a Baptist, very “evangelical,” don’t you know. I thought I knew mainly what that meant until ten years ago. I thought at least MOST Christians fell on the Erica Kirk, not Stephen Miller, side of Christianity, at least most of the time and hopefully for the right reasons(Remember Jesus?). That is absolutely clearly not true for one minute any more for the VAST majority of American “Christians.” I refused to watch one minute of that staged production, orchestrated to be swallowed whole by the drones and cult members of right wing Christianity.
Ironically, the widow’s grace is not matched by her own husband. Almost every word out of his mouth was cruel, hateful and belittling and showed arrogant contempt and true vitriol for those who had a different view of anything from him. And he was clearly racist all the time. There is no way to square that circle. The hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance is off the charts—everywhere. I am grateful his widow said what she did, but it is not being followed in any way shape or form by anyone in the political “right” or the religious “right.”
This country in general, and American Christianity particularly, and ESPECIALLY evangelical Christianity, has sold its soul lock, stock and barrel to Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Tom Homan and all the other morally, spiritually and humanly broken and bankrupt individuals running our country. In my view, Charlie Kirk did not practice what his widow preached nor do the millions treating him as a “Christian” martyr today. Do I sound bitter? When my faith is hijacked and perverted more and more each passing day, yes I am bitter, bewildered and heartbroken.