.jpg)
I’ve said before that Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is hell-bent
on impeaching President Biden for his son’s shady deals and such that he should
look in the nearest mirror. Well, that mirror Mr. Comer follows from two
reputable media sources: RAWSTORY and the DAILY
BEAST with these two similar headlines. So, so pay close attention to the
two story details below from the two sources:
“James Comer may have
conflicts of interest involving his own brother: report”
“James Comer, Like Joe Biden, Also Paid His Brother $200K”
Comer has been going after President Joe Biden because he
loaned his brother, James Biden, $200,000. If that's the GOP standard, then Comer
may want to investigate himself, based on the following:
The heart of the
stories follow (key parts formatted to fit the blog) RAWSTORY version first:
House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-KY) has been investigating the allegedly “shady business practices of President Joe Biden and his family,” but he's been engaged in similar practices with his own relatives for decades.
Comer subpoenaed the president's brother James Biden and son
Hunter Biden, and will no doubt ask them about two personal loan payments between
the siblings in 2017 and 2018 – BTW: when Joe Biden was neither in office or a
candidate.
The Daily Beast report (follows this portion) says
that Comer may have conflicts of interest involving his brother: “According
to KY property records, Comer and his own brother have engaged in land swaps
related to their family farming business. In one deal, also involving $200,000 as
well as a shell company — the more powerful and influential Comer channeled
extra money to his brother, seemingly from nothing. Other recent land swaps
were quickly followed with new applications for special tax breaks, KY state
records show. All of this, perplexingly, related to the dealings of a family
company that appears to have never existed on paper.”
The House GOP investigation has so far failed to turn up evidence the president's loans are connected to any family business dealings, and none of them occurred while holding elected office, but while Comer has exercised government influence over his family's agriculture business for nearly two decades.
Comer has held important positions in agriculture oversight since 2003, while running a family farming business, and those roles overlapped in 2019, the year of the land swaps.
He
only stepped back from an agriculture oversight role recently, in 2020 — one
year after the family business pivoted away from farming.
The land swaps between the congressman and his brother Chad
Comer occurred months after their father died in January 2019 without leaving a
will, and the siblings set about dividing up his properties in KY and
TN in a series of complicated transactions sometimes involving a shell
company they set up.
Also, from the DAILY
BEAST: “For instance, on July 8, Chad Comer bought out his brother’s half
of a piece of inherited Kentucky property, paying $100,000, according to deed
records in Monroe County. Five months later, James and his wife Tamara TJ Comer,
bought the property out in full, this time paying Chad Comer $218,000. The
buyout netted Chad Comer an unexplained $18,000 above the total value in July.”
That purchased involved Farm Team Properties, LLC, which
Comer's financial disclosures described as a “land management and real estate
speculation company” with a range of value between $200,000 and $500,000 – but
in two years had jumped into the $1 million range.
In another swap — this one in April, 2019 — James Comer gifted his brother,
via a $1 transaction, his share of two inherited tracts in Clay County, TN with
a share value being $175,000, according to the deed of sale. The value of James
Comer’s share matches the value of the full property in 1994, when the brothers
and their father first acquired it for $175,000, according to the deed.
A spokesman for the lawmaker did not respond to a request
for comment, but ethics experts say Comer's overlapping public and private
roles raise serious conflicts of interest questions.
For example:
Delaney Marsco,
senior counsel for ethics at nonpartisan watchdog Campaign Legal Center says:
“Conflicts of interest can occur when members serve on committees overseeing
industries in which they are heavily invested or in which their business
interests are intertwined. Voters have a right to know that lawmakers are using
their considerable power in the interest of the public, not to game a personal
business advantage.”
Next is the original source and more detailed DAILY BEAST version and yes it is very long:
Rep James Comer (R-KY) has now subpoenaed President Joe Biden's brother,
James Biden, who Comer has implicated in unsubstantiated allegations of “shady
business practices in the Biden family.”
Comer has in particular been trying to make hay out of two personal loan repayments from James Biden to his brother, for $40,000 and $200,000—with all transactions occurring in 2017 and 2018, when Joe Biden was neither in office nor a candidate.
If Comer genuinely believes these
transactions are clearly “shady business practices” bar, he might want to
consider a parallel inquiry into his own family.
According to KY property records, Comer and his own
brother have engaged in land swaps related to their family farming business. In
one deal — also involving $200,000, as well as a shell company — the more
powerful and influential Comer channeled extra money to his brother, seemingly
from nothing.
Other recent land swaps
were quickly followed with new applications for special tax breaks, state
records show. All of this, perplexingly, related to the dealings of a family
company that appears to have never existed on paper.
But unlike with the Biden’s,
Comer’s own history actually borders a conflict of interest between his
official government role and his private family business — and it’s been going
on for decades.
While Comer and House GOP allies have tried to cast the
Biden transactions as evidence of unsavory and possibly impeachable offenses,
multiple news organizations including CNN, The Wall Street
Journal, FactCheck.org,
and the conservative-leaning Washington Examiner have all thrown cold water on the notion that the payments are
evidence of anything other than a brother helping a brother.
That hasn’t stopped Comer. But hypocrisy hasn’t stopped
Comer before, either.
Earlier this year, The Daily Beast reported that Comer’s probe into the “weaponization of government resources” resounded with echoes of Comer’s own investigation-meddling scandal.
The Daily Beast also reported that
Comer’s first blockbuster oversight hearing this year into abuse of the COVID
loan program also happened to invoke Comer, as well as his brother. This time, the irony is even richer.
Comer said in a press release last month: “Even if this was a personal loan repayment,
it’s still troubling that Joe Biden’s ability to be paid back by his brother
depended on the success of his family’s shady financial dealings.”
But Comer’s investigative
efforts have so far failed to show that Joe Biden’s loans have any connection
to family business dealings let alone to actions while holding elected office.
Comer, however, exercised
government influence directly over his family’s industry for nearly 20 years.
Comer has held important positions in agriculture oversight since 2003, while running a family farming business, and those roles overlapped in 2019, the year of the land swaps.
He
only stepped back from an agriculture oversight role recently, in 2020, one
year after the family business pivoted away from farming.
Comer’s official positions afforded him both insight and
power in the agriculture industry, and he held them while he and his family ran
a multimillion-dollar farming business.
For instance, in 2018, Comer — a member of the House
Agriculture Committee — was selected to negotiate the Farm Bill. He was the
first representative from Kentucky to do so in 30 years, according to an
office press release at the time.
The press release characterized the position as “an
important role in shaping America’s agriculture and nutrition policy,” with
Comer calling the bill “the most impactful legislation signed into law this
year.”
Comer had held a seat on that committee since he was first elected to Congress in 2016. Prior to that, Comer was the Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner, and before attaining that office he sat on the state legislature’s agriculture committee for eight years.
The whole time, Comer, his
brother, and his father were running a farming business, with Comer valuing his
third of the company between $1 million and $5 million by the time he got to Congress.
But Comer’s family company also has its own curiosities. For instance, it doesn’t appear to exist on paper. For years, the company Comer ran with his brother and father has been identified in news reports, official statement, Comer’s own financial disclosures, and livestock sale bulletins as “Comer Land & Cattle.”
But there is no record of an entity by that name in business filings with the commonwealth of Kentucky — or apparently with any other jurisdiction.
A statewide search for business officers only associates Comer
with three defunct entities: 1. An insurance outfit, 2. “Four Dips, Inc.,” and 3. “CFB
Foods, Inc.” — and the still-active Tompkinsville-Monroe County Chamber of
Commerce, where he was a founding member but has since been removed.
Comer has also claimed to run his own personal agriculture
company, “James Comer Jr. Farms” — described in a 2012 Kentucky agriculture
commission press
release as “a 950-acre beef cattle, timber and hay farming operation
in his native Monroe County” — but The Daily Beast couldn’t find any official
records of an entity by that name, either. His brother and father also don’t
appear in filings.
After Comer’s father died in early 2019, Comer appears to have changed his business focus. He went from farming the land to leasing it, a move he touted in a podcast interview last month as the way he “accumulated wealth.”
The next year, Comer left
the House Agriculture Committee, with his official website no
longer listing the committee by August. (He also currently serves on the
Education and Labor Committee, in addition to leading Oversight).
The land swaps between Comer and his brother, Chad Comer,
went down months after they lost their father, in January 2019. Comer’s father —
also named James Comer — died without leaving a will, according to deed records
in Monroe County, Kentucky. That left his two sons — who were also his business
partners — as the legal heirs to his land, and, without the dictates of a will,
they set about divvying up the inheritance.
But some of those transactions aren’t so transparent.
For instance, on July 8, Chad Comer bought out his brother’s half of a piece of inherited Kentucky property, paying $100,000, according to deed records in Monroe County. Five months later, James and his wife Tamara “TJ” Comer, bought the property out in full, this time paying Chad Comer $218,000. The buyout netted Chad Comer an unexplained $18,000 above the total value in July. That purchase, however, had a third party in addition to James and TJ — their own shell company, “Farm Team Properties, LLC.”
Comer’s financial
disclosure that year describes Farm Team Properties, LLC, as a “land
management and real estate speculation company” with a range of value between
$200,000 and $500,000. In two years, its value had increased to the $500,000 to $1 million range.
In another swap — this one in April, 2019 — James Comer
gifted his brother, via a $1 transaction, his share of two inherited tracts in
Clay County, Tennessee, with a share value being $175,000, according to the
deed of sale. The value of James Comer’s share matches the value of the full
property in 1994, when the brothers and their father first acquired it for
$175,000, according to the deed.
It’s not immediately clear why James Comer listed that same specific dollar amount for his share — either to match what was already on the books, or to reflect a neatly coincidental increase in value.
But in September,
Chad Comer applied for a special Tennessee agricultural tax break on that property,
according to Clay County records. The tax break, called a “Greenbelt Assessment,”
assesses property taxes at its “use value” instead of fair market value as long
as the land generates a certain amount of annual agricultural income. (James
Comer made that move this year after buying a $10,000 parcel from his brother,
tax records show).
The same day that James Comer gave his brother that land,
Chad Comer reciprocated with an apparently more valuable piece of property in
Macon County, TN — except James Comer didn’t disclose that value in the sale.
Instead, Comer appears to have whited that number out,
writing “exempt” in its place on the deed, then signing below. However, the
land’s value can still be ascertained from the deed history in Macon County,
where records show that their father had originally purchased the tract for
$203,000 in 2015. That means that, while Comer appears to have netted a value
of roughly $30,000 in the swap, he did not put that in the public record.
While the amount of money involved in these transactions is not even in the millions, they’re comparable to the Biden loans. And the largest of those two loans, $200,000, is less than the 2015 value of Comer’s “exempt” purchase.
Comer wondered in a press release last month: “Did he know that the same day James Biden wrote him a check for $200,000, James Biden had just received a loan for the exact same amount from business dealings with a company that was in financial distress and failing?”
It’s unclear how Comer
first came into the family business. Land records from the 1990s list his name
alongside his brother and father as property buyers. And the Comer brothers
have bought property together as far back as 1993, when they paid a combined
$16,500 for a Macon County parcel.
What is clearer, however,
is that the family business has changed.
Comer Land & Cattle appears in a Lancaster Farming article from 1988, when a bull that the company co-owned, named “CLC High Card 7111,” won second place at the Indiana State Fair. News reports throughout Comer’s political career identified him as running the company with his father and brother, a farming and livestock operation he recalled last month in a podcast interview with former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), a former chairman of the Oversight Committee himself.
Comer said: “I was actually a senior in college when I bought my first farm, in 1993. I paid $350 an acre for that,” a possible reference to the $16,500 purchase. He then breezed through the shift from active farming to real estate speculation, saying he sold timber off the farm, raised cattle and crops there, and eventually took a “tobacco buyout” from the government.
What Comer didn’t mention is that he had a government role related to that tobacco buyout. From 2005 to 2011, Comer served on the state legislature’s Tobacco Settlement Agreement Fund Oversight Committee.
Comer was
apparently quite hands-on in this role, according to press interviews from
the time, placing an emphasis on weeding out federal buyout farming recipients
who didn’t demonstrate profitability.
Comer later brought that experience to bear when he wore down Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), convincing him to get behind hemp
farming. Comer’s business focus has since shifted to real estate.
He also told Chaffetz: “Now I lease it. I lease the hunting.
The key to me accumulating what I have was through the real estate.” Note: His financial
disclosures reflect that move.
In 2018, Comer reported a
33% stake in “Comer Land & Cattle,” a business he’d run for years with his
father and his brother, Chad. His disclosures valued that stake between $1
million and $5 million, describing the company as “a family farming operation
engaged in beef cattle, corn, soybeans, mixed hay, & timber farming.”
In 2019, Comer Land & Cattle disappeared from from his congressioal disclosures, with multiple new joint operations appearing to take its place, and while those entities all had “farm” in their name and also included the name Comer with their income shown from rent.
Comer also told Chaffetz, pegging the farm’s appreciated
value at $5,000 an acre: “That first farm was a very good investment. It’s
cash-flowed really well. I did what every business guy does: I started
borrowing money and buying land and leveraging that. And I really accumulated a
lot of land.”
Comer claimed that today he’s “one of the bigger land-owners in my home area,” and that he acquired his assets the “old-fashioned way” and “didn’t really inherit that much.”
While part
may be true in the sense that Comer started out small, he also started out with
the support of his father and his brother. He then rose to a position of
considerable power and influence over his own industry, and contrary to his own
statement does appear to have inherited a great deal.
He claims he carries “a lot of liability with a lot of farm debt and stuff and two liabilities:” (1) a farm mortgage from 1996 between $500,000 and $1 million, and (2) a line of credit of the same value from last year.
He also took out the line of credit from South Central Bank, where Comer was on the board of directors for 12 years.
Comer concluded
saying: “You read those real estate books, “How to Get Rich in Real
Estate.” I kind of — I’m not rich, but I accumulated wealth kind of that way.”
My 2 Cents: Based on of the above, the GOP must remove Comer – but they won’t and they must drop their bogus Biden impeachment BS and they say is tied to Hunter Biden James Biden – it surely is not.
So, what about dropping
that crap, um, new GOP Speaker Johnson and others like Rep. Taylor Greene and Rep.
Jim Jordan, too.
As the old expression says: “There ain’t no there, there” regarding any dirt on President Biden, but what about Rep. James Comer as addressed above, um? Oops…
Note: A Comer spokesperson
did not return The Daily Beast’s request for any comment on this article and
the details laid out above – all factual from KY government records, too.
I wonder why not. A second
oops probably, um?
Also, related from these
two other news sources: (1) The New Republic via Yahoo.news,
and (2) from Salon.com.
As I also started up front - there's a lot here on Rep Comer - the #1 hypocrite now chasing the entire Biden family; and shame on him and his out of control GOP.
Thanks for stopping by.
No comments:
Post a Comment