Leader of Biden probe has shell in his own closet
Head of impeachment inquiry has focused on paper-only companies in president’s family, but uses one himself.
WASHINGTON — Rep. James Comer boasts of being one of the largest landholders near his rural Kentucky hometown, and has meticulously documented nearly all of his holdings on congressional financial disclosure documents — roughly 1,600 acres in all.
But there are six 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 co-owns 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 Biden.
In particular, Comer has attacked some Biden family members, including the Democratic president’s son Hunter, over their use of shell companies that appear designed to obscure millions of dollars in earnings received from shadowy middlemen and foreign interests.
Such companies typically exist only on paper and are formed to hold an asset, such as real estate. Their opaque structures are often designed to help hide ownership of property and assets.
The companies used by the Bidens are already playing a central role in the impeachment investigation, which is expected to gain velocity after House Republicans voted Wednesday to formally authorize the inquiry.
The vote follows the federal indictment last week of Hunter Biden on charges that he engaged in a scheme to avoid paying taxes on his earnings through the companies.
But Comer’s high-profile role has also drawn attention to his own finances and relationships, including his ties to prominent figures from his hometown who have complicated pasts not all that dissimilar to some of those caught up in his Biden probe.
Comer declined to comment through a spokesman, but has aggressively denied any wrongdoing in establishing a shell company, calling criticisms the kind of thing “only dumb, financially illiterate people pick up on.”
The AP found that Farm Team Properties functions in a similarly opaque way as the companies used by the Bidens, masking Comer’s stake in the land that he co-owns with the donor from being revealed on his financial disclosure forms, which states the company is worth as much as $1 million.
It’s not clear why Comer put the six acres in a shell company, or what other assets Farm Team Properties might hold.
Ethics experts say House rules require members of Congress to disclose all assets worth more than $1,000 that are held by such companies.
“It seems pretty clear to me that he should be disclosing the individual land assets that are held by” the shell company, said Delaney Marsco, a senior attorney who specializes in congressional ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington.
Comer created the company in 2017 to hold his stake in the six acres, which he had purchased two years earlier in a joint venture with construction contractor Darren Cleary, a major campaign contributor from Monroe County, Ky., where the congressman was born and raised.
Cleary did not respond to an interview request. But the two have offered mutual praise for each other over the years. Comer has even said from the House floor that Cleary is his friend and “the epitome of a successful businessperson.”
Cleary, his businesses and family have donated roughly $70,000 to Comer’s various campaigns, records show.
When he and Comer began their joint venture, Cleary was selling an acre of his family’s land near Tompkinsville, Ky., to the state so it could build a highway bypass — a project that was completed in 2020. Comer paid $128,000 to Cleary for a 50% stake for in six acres that would end up being adjacent to the highway.
Comer, a powerful political figure in this part of Kentucky, announced his bid for Congress days after purchasing the land.
Farm Team Properties has since grown more valuable. Comer’s financial disclosure forms indicate 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.
As chair of the House Oversight Committee, Comer has presented himself as a bipartisan ethics crusader only interested in uncovering the truth. As evidence, he has pointed to a long career as a state legislator and official who sought to build bridges with Democrats.
Interviews with allies, critics and constituents, however, indicate that he’s a fierce partisan who has ignored wrongdoing by friends and supporters if they can help him advance in business and politics.
“The Jamie Comer I knew was light and sunshine and looking for common ground. Now he’s Nixonian,” said Adam Edelen, a former Democratic state auditor and friend, comparing the lawmaker to the disgraced former president who resigned from office amid the Watergate scandal.
In Comer’s telling, he is a man of self-made wealth who founded his first farm while still enrolled at Western Kentucky University and shrewdly invested in land. He also cut his teeth in the bare-knuckled machine politics of Monroe County, Ky., and knew how to win allies, according to those who knew him.
When he was barely out of high school, Comer was writing campaign checks to state politicians, including a $4,000 contribution to a Republican candidate for governor in 1990, according to local news stories about his campaign finance disclosures.
Comer followed in the footsteps of his paternal grandfather, Harlin Comer, who was a leading figure in local Republican politics.
When Harlin Comer died in 1993, the younger Comer, 21, took over as chairman of the Monroe County GOP.
A wave of indictments against local Republican officeholders, some of whom helped launch Comer’s political career and became close friends, soon followed.
Mitchell Page and Larry Pitcock were among those charged in the sweep. Page, then the county’s chief executive, and Pitcock, the former county clerk, were sentenced in 1996 to 18 months in prison for tampering with a state computer database so that they and their families could avoid paying vehicle taxes.
Comer has remained close to both men, who did not respond to requests for comment. He praised Page on the House f loor in 2020 for his “principled leadership.”
Pitcock and his family members, meanwhile, have donated about $9,000 to Comer’s political campaigns and held one of his first fundraisers when he ran to become state agriculture commissioner, records show.
Comer dismissed questions about the propriety of having Pitcock sponsor a fundraiser for him, noting to CN2 News that it helped him raise nearly $60,000.
In 2011, a voter fraud case roiled local politics and swept up Billy Proffitt, Comer’s longtime friend and former college roommate. Proffitt pleaded guilty in December 2011 and was sentenced to probation.
A few years later, Proffitt came to Comer’s defense against allegations that nearly derailed the future congressman’s political career.
During the 2015 Republican primary for governor, the Louisville Courier-Journal received a letter from a former college girlfriend, in which she asserted that Comer had hit her and that their relationship had been “toxic.”
Proffitt told the newspaper that he had never seen Comer be abusive toward her.
“That doesn’t sound like Jamie at all,” said Proffitt, using Comer’s nickname.
Comer ended up losing the race by 83 votes. But the two remain close friends and business associates.
Profitt’s family’s real estate company is now spearheading efforts to sell the land held by Farm Team Properties.