Impeachment probe lead has shell company

TOMPKINSVILLE, Ky. — Rep. James Comer, a multimillionaire farmer, boasts of being one of the largest landholders near his rural Kentucky hometown, and he has meticulously documented nearly all of his landholdings on congressional financial disclosure documents — roughly 1,600 acres in all.

But there are 6 acres that he bought in 2015 and co-owns with a longtime campaign contributor that he has treated differently, transferring his ownership to Farm Team Properties, a shell company he coowns with his wife.

Interviews and records reviewed by The Associated Press provide new insights into the financial deal, which risks undercutting the force of some of Comer’s central arguments in his impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden.

The AP found that Farm Team Properties functions in a similarly opaque way as the companies used by the Bidens, masking his stake in the land that he co-owns with a donor from being revealed on his financial disclosure forms.

It’s not clear why Comer decided to put those six acres in a shell company, or what other assets Farm Team Properties may hold. On his most recent financial disclosure forms, Comer lists its value as being as much as $1 million, a substantial sum but a fraction of his overall wealth.

Comer created the company in 2017 to hold his stake in the six acres that he purchased two years earlier in a joint venture with Darren Cleary, a campaign contributor and construction contractor from Monroe County, Kentucky.

At the time he and Comer entered their venture, Cleary was selling an acre of his family’s land to Kentucky so it could build a highway bypass near Tompkinsville. He sold Comer a 50 percent stake for $128,000 in six acres he owned that would end up being adjacent to the highway.

Comer, a powerful political figure in this rural part of Kentucky, announced his bid for Congress days after purchasing the land.

Marketing materials described the land as “choice” property and play up its proximity to the bypass. The partnership sold off about an acre last year for $150,000, a substantial increase over its value when purchased, property records show.

Farm Team Properties has also become more valuable. On Comer’s financial disclosure forms, it has risen in value from between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2016 to between $500,001 and $1 million in 2022, records show.