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 engaged in similar practices with his own relatives.
The Kentucky Republican subpoenaed the president's brother James Biden and son Hunter Biden, and will no doubt ask about two personal loan payments between the siblings in 2017 and 2018 – when Joe Biden was neither in office or a candidate – but The Daily Beast reported that Comer may have conflicts of interest involving his brother.
"According to Kentucky property records, Comer and his own brother have engaged in land swaps related to their family farming business," the website reported. "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."
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 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," reported The Daily Beast. "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 Kentucky and Tennessee in a series of complicated transactions sometimes involving a shell company they set up.
"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," reported The Daily Beast. "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 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, Tennessee, with a share value being $175,000, according to the deed of sale," the website reported. "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 questions.
“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,” said Delaney Marsco, senior counsel for ethics at nonpartisan watchdog Campaign Legal Center. “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.”
