WASHINGTON — House and Senate Democrats have opened separate investigations into the Trump administration’s decision to close a criminal FBI inquiry into Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar, that began after he was recorded last year accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash.

Homan’s encounter with undercover FBI agents in September 2024 was recorded on audiotape and led him to be investigated for potential bribery and other crimes. On the tape, he agreed to help the agents, who were posing as businessmen, get government contracts related to border security, according to people familiar with the case.

Senior officials expressed skepticism about the case as early as February, and the Justice Department closed the investigation this year.

In a letter Monday, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel provide “all recordings from Mr. Homan’s meeting,” all of their investigative material and any communications between the White House and their agencies over the case.

“Your reported effort to shut down this investigation appears to be a brazen cover-up to protect Donald Trump’s allies, at a time when the DOJ and FBI are also being ordered to aggressively pursue prosecution of Donald Trump’s political enemies,” the Democrats wrote in the letter, which was led by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee.

Separately on Tuesday, a group of Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent letters to Patel, Bondi and Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, asking that “recordings of Mr. Homan receiving cash from undercover FBI agents” be provided to Congress and made public.