While Rep. James Comer (R-KY) has been tapped to steer congressional probes into what House Republicans characterize as the “weaponization” of government investigations, Comer is no stranger to weaponizing politically driven investigations.
Last week, Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) fired off a controversial missive to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, claiming Bragg was flirting with “an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority” in his reportedly pending decision to indict former President Donald Trump. The letter demanded funding records related to the probe and preemptively attacked any coming charges as “a politically motivated prosecutorial decision.”
But Comer has yet to answer for what appears to be a politically motivated prosecutorial decision from his past.
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The issue resurfaced in a New York Times profile on Comer last week, where the congressman “confirmed, for the first time” that he had helped orchestrate the 2015 leak of a journalist’s private emails. His campaign then used the leak—unsuccessfully—to combat domestic abuse allegations during Comer’s ill-fated Kentucky gubernatorial run.
According to the Times, Comer also “strongly hinted” in the interview that he had obtained the emails from a private law firm server.
“I’ve had two servers in my lifetime,” Comer told the Times. “Hunter Biden’s is one, and you can—I’m not going to say who the other one was, but you can use your imagination.”
He added, “It ended up in my lap. I’ll put it like that.”
Comer’s office didn’t reply to a request for comment.
During the 2015 primary, the Comer campaign tied those leaked emails to a grand jury investigation into local blogger and erstwhile attorney Michael J. Adams, who had been publishing rumors of the abuse allegations since the early stages of Comer’s run.
But the Comer campaign was itself responsible for putting that grand jury into motion in the first place, when Comer’s running mate, Chris McDaniel, passed other emails he’d received from the blogger to a county prosecutor, Rob Sanders—who also happened to be a political ally.
(Sanders had also donated to the Comer campaign ahead of the primary—while his grand jury was investigating—according to Kentucky campaign finance records.)
Not only did the Comer campaign initiate the grand jury investigation, they were also the ones who first revealed it to the public—and at a crucial moment in the election.
Two weeks before the primary, Comer’s running mate, McDaniel, mentioned the existence of the grand jury in a debate. That same day, the Louisville Courier-Journal ran the woman’s story, quoting from a four-page letter she’d sent the publication along with interviews with her mother and people close to her at the time of the alleged abuse.
Comer then falsely implied to reporters that the grand jury probe not only concerned Adams, but also the abuse allegations and improper coordination with the campaign of his primary rival. The prosecutor, Rob Sanders, then closed the investigation without informing the public soon after Comer lost the primary.
Comer has denied the allegations. His office didn’t reply to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
In the letter, the woman said she decided to come forward after reading Comer’s denials. And those denials, it turns out, had appeared in the story about the emails that Comer recently admitted leaking—and which he appears to have obtained from the law firm server. The emails showed that the blogger had discussed the abuse rumors with an attorney married to the running mate of Comer’s GOP rival, Hal Heiner.
In the debate, McDaniel said the race had taken “a turn for the nasty,” citing the link between the blogger and the Heiner campaign. McDaniel then revealed the previously secret grand jury probe, claiming the blogger had “put out personal threats” against his daughters, which “caused us to have to contact the commonwealth’s attorney, who has convened a grand jury and has an ongoing investigation.”
After the debate, Sanders—a close political ally who had reportedly entertained a gubernatorial run before Comer stepped in—confirmed that he’d launched the grand jury inquiry in December.
“I do not anticipate that this investigation will be over before the primary, and that is very intentional on my part,” Sanders told the Cincinnati Enquirer on May 5.
The prosecutor later disclosed that he had shuttered the five-month investigation without charges “at the end of the primary.” But Sanders, who had publicly confirmed the grand jury before the primary, didn’t publicly confirm dissolving the panel until months after he ended the inquiry.
“I guess the investigation more or less stopped at the end of the primary election because I haven’t heard any further complaints against Mr. Adams,” Sanders told the Courier-Journal in August, adding, “barring additional evidence or testimony, I don’t anticipate they will be considering anything else.”
A furious Adams accused the campaign and Sanders of abusing the judicial system to “deceive the public” for political gain.
“I am outraged that a prosecutor would coordinate his office with a political campaign to deceive the public and influence an election,” Adams told the Courier-Journal. (The Daily Beast sent a comment request to an email address affiliated with Adams’ official Kentucky Bar Association account, but didn’t receive a reply.)
At the same time, Comer—widely regarded as one of the more responsible members of the rambunctious House GOP caucus—has quietly closed a previous Democratic probe into whether Trump leveraged his White House position for personal financial gain. He did the same with another investigation into Saudi Arabia’s business dealings with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner; the Times reported that Comer acknowledged the investigation would be politically infeasible.
Last Thursday, the Congressional Integrity Project, a Democratic group, seized on Comer’s Times confession to request a formal local investigation into Comer’s role in the email leak, the Courier-Journal reported.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, CIP president Kyle Herrig said that while Comer has used his subcommittee perch to target purported politically-motivated investigations, Comer “didn’t think twice about weaponizing prosecutors to advance his own political career.”
“While Comer may have grown accustomed to leading political stunts that don’t pack much of a punch, a law enforcement investigation in Kentucky into his apparent admission that he illegally hacked a server and leaked documents would have serious consequences,” Herrig alleged in the statement.
While Comer’s efforts have the full-throated support of the right-wing agitators in the House, other Republican leaders appear skeptical.
“He’s likely to do it in a more kind of levelheaded, less flamboyant way than some members of the House might do that job,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told the Times last week.
“He’ll do it as well as anyone could. What we don’t know is whether anyone could,” McConnell added.
