Rep. James Comer, a multimillionaire farmer, boasts of being one of many largest landholders close to his rural Kentucky hometown, and he has meticulously documented almost all of his landholdings on congressional monetary disclosure paperwork – roughly 1,600 acres in all.
However there are 6 acres that he purchased in 2015 and co-owns with a longtime marketing campaign contributor that he has handled in another way, transferring his possession to Farm Group Properties, a shell firm he co-owns along with his spouse.
Interviews and information reviewed by the Related Press present new insights into the monetary deal, which dangers undercutting the drive of a few of Comer’s central arguments in his impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden. For months, the chairman of the Home Oversight committee and his Republican colleagues have been pounding Biden, a Democrat, for a way his kinfolk traded on their well-known identify to safe enterprise offers.
Particularly, Comer has attacked some Biden relations, together with the president’s son Hunter, over their use of shell corporations that seem designed to obscure hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in earnings they obtained from shadowy middlemen and foreign interests.
Such corporations sometimes exist solely on paper and are fashioned to carry an asset, like actual property. Their opaque constructions are sometimes designed to assist cover possession of property and different property.
The businesses utilized by the Bidens are already taking part in a central position within the impeachment investigation, which is anticipated to achieve velocity after House Republicans voted Wednesday to formally authorize the probe. The vote follows the federal indictment final week of Biden’s son Hunter on charges he engaged in a scheme to avoid paying taxes on his earnings by way of the businesses.
However as Comer works to “deliver the transparency and accountability that the American people demand” by way of the GOP’s investigation, his personal funds and relationships have begun to attract discover, too, together with his ties to distinguished native figures who’ve sophisticated pasts not all that dissimilar to a few of these caught up in his Biden probe.
Comer declined to remark by way of a spokesman however has aggressively denied any wrongdoing in establishing a shell firm.
After Democrats blasted him for being a hypocrite following the Day by day Beast’s disclosure of the corporate final month, Comer countered by calling a Democratic lawmaker a “smurf” and saying that the criticism was the form of factor “only dumb, financially illiterate people pick up on.”
The AP discovered that Farm Group Properties capabilities in a equally opaque approach as the businesses utilized by the Bidens, masking his stake within the land that he co-owns with the donor from being revealed on his monetary disclosure varieties. These information describe Farm Group Properties as his spouse’s “land management and real estate speculation” firm with out offering additional particulars.
It’s not clear why Comer determined to place these six acres in a shell firm, or what different property Farm Group Properties might maintain. On his most up-to-date monetary disclosure varieties, Comer lists its worth as being as a lot as $1 million, a considerable sum however a fraction of his total wealth.
After this story first revealed Thursday, Comer responded throughout an look on FOX Information, stating that Farm Group Properties “has five different assets and lots of revenue.” He didn’t reveal what these different property could also be. He additionally falsely claimed that the donor, Darren Cleary, “wasn’t a campaign contributor” on the time the property was bought. Cleary and his household have donated to Comer’s political campaigns since at the very least 2010, information present.
Ethics specialists say Home guidelines require members of Congress to reveal all property held by such corporations which might be price greater than $1,000.
“It seems pretty clear to me that he should be disclosing the individual land assets that are held by” the shell firm, mentioned Delaney Marsco, a senior lawyer who makes a speciality of congressional ethics on the nonpartisan Marketing campaign Authorized Heart in Washington.
Marsco and different specialists had been perplexed as to why Comer would place such property in a shell firm, particularly since he disclosed his different holdings and doesn’t seem to have taken different efforts to cover his wealth.
“This is actually a real problem that anti-corruption activists would love to get legislative reform on,” mentioned Kathleen Clark, a legislation professor at Washington College in St. Louis who makes a speciality of authorities ethics. “It is hard to trace assets held in shell companies. His is a good example.”
Comer created the corporate in 2017 to carry his stake within the six acres that he bought two years earlier in a three way partnership with Cleary, a marketing campaign contributor and building contractor from Monroe County, Kentucky, the place the congressman was born and raised.
It’s not clear how Comer got here to speculate with Cleary, who didn’t reply to an interview request. They’ve supplied mutual reward for one another over time, together with Comer having referred to as Cleary “my friend” and “the epitome of a successful businessperson” from the Home ground.
Cleary, his companies and household have donated roughly $70,000 to Comer’s numerous campaigns, information present. He has additionally lauded Comer on social media for “For Fighting For Us Everyday” and has posted photographs of the 2 on a golf course collectively.
On the time he and Comer entered their enterprise, Cleary was promoting an acre of his household’s land to Kentucky so it might construct a freeway bypass close to Tompkinsville, which was accomplished in 2020. He offered Comer a 50% stake for $128,000 in six acres he owned that may find yourself being adjoining to the freeway.
Comer, a strong political determine on this rural a part of Kentucky, introduced his bid for Congress days after buying the land.
Advertising supplies described the land as “choice” property and play up its proximity to the bypass. The partnership offered off about an acre final 12 months for $150,000, a considerable improve over its worth when bought, property information present.
Farm Group Properties has additionally develop into extra priceless. On Comer’s monetary disclosure varieties, it has risen in worth from between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2016 to between $500,001 and $1 million in 2022, information present.
As Home Oversight Committee chairman, Comer has introduced himself as a bipartisan ethics crusader solely inquisitive about uncovering the reality. As proof, he has pointed to an extended profession as a state legislator and official who sought to construct bridges with Democrats and to “clean up scandal, restore confidence, and crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Interviews with allies, critics and constituents, nevertheless, reveal a fierce partisan who has ignored wrongdoing by associates and supporters in the event that they might help him advance in enterprise and politics.
“The Jamie Comer I knew was light and sunshine and looking for common ground. Now he’s Nixonian,” mentioned Adam Edelen, a former Democratic state auditor and buddy, evaluating the lawmaker to a disgraced former president who resigned from workplace amid the Watergate scandal.
Comer’s highway to Congress
In Comer’s telling, he’s a person of self-made wealth who based his first farm whereas nonetheless enrolled at Western Kentucky College and shrewdly invested in land.
After graduating in 1993, Comer obtained into the insurance coverage enterprise with Billy D. Poston, a household buddy.
The 2 later had a falling out. When poor well being prevented Polston from working for reelection as a state consultant in 2000, Comer, then 27, took on Polston’s spouse within the GOP major, successful that race and the overall election. For years, Comer took credit score in interviews for defeating the ‘incumbent.”
Comer lower his tooth within the bare-knuckled machine politics of Monroe County, Kentucky, and knew the way to win allies, in keeping with those that knew him.
When he was barely out of highschool, Comer was writing marketing campaign checks to state politicians, together with a $4,000 contribution to a Republican candidate for governor in 1990, adopted by one other verify in 1991 for $1,050, in keeping with marketing campaign finance disclosures revealed in native information tales. Each contributions listed Comer’s occupation as “student.”
Comer adopted within the footsteps of his paternal grandfather, Harlin Comer, who was a number one determine in native Republican politics, in addition to a building contractor and financial institution officer.
When Harlin Comer died in 1993, the 21-year-old Comer took over as chairman of the Monroe County GOP. A wave of indictments in opposition to native Republican workplace holders, a few of whom helped launch Comer’s political profession and have become shut associates, quickly adopted.
Mitchell Web page and Larry Pitcock had been amongst these charged within the sweep. Web page, then the county’s chief govt, and Pitcock, the previous county clerk, had been sentenced in 1996 to 18 months in jail for tampering with a state pc database in order that they and their households might keep away from paying car taxes.
Somewhat than turning on Pitcock and Web page, Comer has remained near the lads. He praised Web page on the Home ground in 2020 for his “principled leadership.”
Web page didn’t reply to a request for remark. Pitcock couldn’t be reached at telephone numbers listed to him.
Pitcock and his relations have donated about $9,000 to Comer’s political campaigns and held considered one of Comer’s first fundraisers when he ran to develop into state agriculture commissioner, information present. Comer dismissed questions in regards to the propriety of getting Pitcock sponsor a fundraiser for him, noting to CN2 Information that it helped him increase almost $60,000.
Comer finally employed Pitcock’s son to work for him within the agriculture commissioner’s workplace, information present. Members of the Pitcock household have since attended a Home Republican fundraiser with Comer in Washington and posed for pictures with him contained in the U.S. Capitol.
In 2011, a voter fraud case roiled native politics and swept up Billy Proffitt, Comer’s longtime buddy and former school roommate. Proffitt pleaded responsible in December 2011 and was sentenced to probation.
Just a few years later, Proffitt got here to Comer’s protection from allegations that almost derailed the long run congressman’s political profession. Throughout the 2015 Republican major for governor, an area blogger started posting about accusations that Comer had abused a university girlfriend.
Comer vehemently denied the allegations. And within the hopes of discrediting the tales, he leaked emails to an area paper that instructed a rival marketing campaign had been coordinating the protection with the blogger, in keeping with The New York Instances. The leak allegation might have discredited the opposite candidate, Hal Heiner, however ended up hurting Comer’s marketing campaign.
The protection angered the previous girlfriend, Marilyn Thomas, who wrote a letter to the Louisville Courier-Journal through which she asserted that Comer had hit her and that their relationship had been “toxic.” She additionally instructed the newspaper that Comer grew to become “enraged” in 1991 after he discovered she had used his identify on a kind she submitted earlier than receiving an abortion at a Louisville clinic.
Proffitt, nevertheless, instructed the newspaper that he had by no means seen Comer be abusive towards Thomas.
“That doesn’t sound like Jamie at all,” mentioned Proffitt, utilizing Comer’s nickname, including that he had by no means heard in regards to the allegations of Thomas getting an abortion.
Comer ended up shedding the first by 83 votes to Matt Bevin, who went on to win the overall election. It was the one marketing campaign that Comer has misplaced.
The lawmaker and Proffitt stay shut associates and enterprise associates.
Profitt’s household’s actual property firm is spearheading the efforts to promote the land held by Farm Group Properties.
In a quick interview, Proffitt referred to as the concentrate on Comer’s shell firm “much ado about nothing,” including that the lawmaker “is a loyal friend and a good man who comes from a really, really good family.”
