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House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) on Wednesday subpoenaed President Joe Bidenâs brother, James Biden, who Comer has implicated in unsubstantiated allegations of âshady business practicesâ 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 $200,000âwith all transactions occurring in 2017 and 2018, when Joe Biden was neither in office nor a candidate.
But if Comer genuinely believes these transactions clear the âshady business practicesâ bar, he might want to consider a parallel inquiry into his own family.
According to Kentucky property records, Comer and his own brother have engaged in land swaps related to their family farming business. In one dealâalso involving $200,000, as well as a shell companyâthe 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 Bidens, Comerâs own history actually borders a conflict of interest between his official government role and his private family businessâand itâs 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 organizationsâincluding CNN, The Wall Street Journal, FactCheck.org, and the conservative-leaning Washington Examinerâhave all thrown cold water on the notion that the payments are evidence of anything other than a brother helping a brother.
That hasnât stopped Comer. But hypocrisy hasnât stopped Comer before, either.
Earlier this year, The Daily Beast reported that Comerâs probe into the âweaponizationâ of government resources resounded with echoes of Comerâs own investigation-meddling scandal. The Daily Beast also reported that Comerâs first blockbuster oversight hearing this yearâinto abuse of the COVID loan programâalso happened to invoke Comer, as well as his brother.
This time, the irony is even richer.
âEven if this was a personal loan repayment, itâs still troubling that Joe Bidenâs ability to be paid back by his brother depended on the success of his familyâs shady financial dealings,â Comer said in a press release last month.
But Comerâs investigative efforts have so far failed to show that Joe Bidenâs loans have any connection to family business dealingsâlet alone to actions while holding elected office. Comer, however, exercised government influence directly over his familyâs 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 2020âone year after the family business pivoted away from farming.
Delaney Marsco, senior counsel for ethics at nonpartisan watchdog Campaign Legal Center, told The Daily Beast that Comerâs overlapping public and private roles raise concerns about whether he may be trying to âgame a personal business advantage.â
âConflicts 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,â Marsco said. âVoters 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.â
A Comer spokesperson did not return The Daily Beastâs comment request.
Comerâs 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, Comerâa member of the House Agriculture Committeeâwas 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 âan important role in shaping Americaâs agriculture and nutrition policy,â with Comer calling the bill âthe most impactful legislation signed into law this year.â
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 legislatureâs 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 Comerâs family company also has its own curiosities. For instance, it doesnât appear to exist on paper.
For years, the company Comer ran with his brother and father has been identified in news reports, official statements, Comerâs financial disclosures, and livestock sale bulletins as âComer Land & Cattle.â But there is no record of an entity by that name in business filings with the commonwealth of Kentuckyâor apparently with any other jurisdiction. A statewide search for business officers only associates Comer with three defunct entitiesâan insurance outfit, âFour Dips, Inc,â and âCFB Foods, Incââand 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, âJames Comer Jr. Farmsââdescribed in a 2012 Kentucky agriculture commission press release as âa 950-acre beef cattle, timber and hay farming operation in his native Monroe Countyââbut The Daily Beast couldnât find any official records of an entity by that name, either. His brother and father also donât appear in filings.
After Comerâs 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 âaccumulated wealth.â The next year, Comer left the House Agriculture Committee, with his official website no longer listing the committee by August. (He 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. Comerâs fatherâalso named James Comerâdied without leaving a will, according to deed records in Monroe County, Kentucky. That left his two sonsâwho were also his business partnersâas 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 arenât so transparent.
For instance, on July 8, Chad Comer bought out his brotherâs 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 âTJâ 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 TJâtheir own shell company, âFarm Team Properties, LLC.â Comerâs financial disclosure that year describes Farm Team Properties, LLC, as a âland management and real estate speculation companyâ 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 swapâthis one in April, 2019âJames 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 Comerâs 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.
Itâs not immediately clear why James Comer listed that same specific dollar amount for his shareâeither 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 âGreenbelt Assessment,â assesses property taxes at its âuse valueâ 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, Tennesseeâexcept James Comer didnât disclose that value in the sale.
Instead, Comer appears to have whited that number out, writing âexemptâ in its place on the deed, then signing below. However, the landâs 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, theyâre comparable to the Biden loans. And the largest of those two loans, $200,000, is less than the 2015 value of Comerâs âexemptâ purchase.
âDid 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?â Comer wondered in a press release last month.
Itâs 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 âCLC High Card 7111,â won second place at the Indiana State Fair. News reports throughout Comerâs 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.
âI was actually a senior in college when I bought my first farm, in 1993. I paid $350 an acre for that,â Comer said, 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 âtobacco buyoutâ from the government.
What Comer didnât mention is that he had a government role related to that tobacco buyout. From 2005 to 2011, Comer served on the state legislatureâs 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 didnât 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.
However, Comerâs business focus has since shifted to real estate.
âNow I lease it. I lease the hunting,â he told Chaffetz, noting that âthe key to me accumulating what I have was through the real estate.â
Comerâs financial disclosures reflect that move.
In 2018, the Oversight Chairman reported a 33 percent stake in âComer Land & Cattle,â a business heâd 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 âa family farming operation engaged in beef cattle, corn, soybeans, mixed hay, & timber farming.â But in 2019, Comer Land & Cattle disappeared from his disclosures, with multiple new joint operations appearing to take its place, and while those entities all had âfarmâ in their nameâmany also including âComerââtheir income was from rent.
âThat first farm was a very good investment. Itâs cash-flowed really well,â Comer told Chaffetz, pegging the farmâs appreciated value at $5,000 an acre. He said he âdid what every business guy does: I started borrowing money and buying land and leveraging that. And I really accumulated a lot of land.â
Comer claimed that today heâs âone of the bigger land-owners in my home area,â but he said he acquired his assets the âold-fashioned wayâ and âdidnât really inherit that much.â
While that 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, andâcontrary to his own statementâhe does appear to have inherited a great deal.
Comer also claimed he still carries âa lot of liability,â with âa lot of farm debt and stuff.â He currently has two liabilities: a farm mortgage from 1996 between $500,000 and $1 million, and a line of credit of the same value from last year. He took out the line of credit from South Central Bank, where Comer was on the board of directors for 12 years.
âYou read those real estate books, âHow To Get Rich In Real Estate.â I kind ofâIâm not rich, but I accumulated wealth kind of that way,â he said.