We Now Have Even More Details About James Comer’s Shady Shell Company
The man leading the Biden impeachment inquiry has apparently engaged in nearly identical behavior that he has hounded the president over.In a scathing new report, the Associated Press found that a shell company held by the chair of the House Oversight Committee James Comer functioned “in a similarly opaque way” as the Biden family’s own companies.For months, Comer has harangued the Biden family for leveraging their name to conduct business deals and for using shell companies to cloud their transactions with foreign parties and shady figures, indicting the president’s son Hunter Biden on nine tax charges related to the shell companies.But a series of interviews and records searches conducted by the AP showed that the Kentucky Republican did something remarkably similar, transferring a six-acre parcel of land co-owned with one of his major campaign donors, Darren Cleary, to a shell company he created in 2017 with his wife.The property has grown in value since its original purchase, jumping from a valuation of between $50,000 and $100,000 at the time of purchase to between $500,001 and $1 million, according to Comer’s financial statements obtained by the outlet. That flies in the face of not only Comer’s self-purported squeaky-clean reputation but also House rules, which require members of Congress to disclose all assets held by companies worth more than $1,000.“This is actually a real problem that anti-corruption activists would love to get legislative reform on,” Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told the AP. “It is hard to trace assets held in shell companies. His is a good example.”Last month, Democrats railed on the Kentucky Republican following a Daily Beast report that revealed the first inklings that Comer had engaged in his own shell company, involving intra-family business dealings. At the time, Commer snapped back that it was the kind of thing “only dumb, financially illiterate people pick up on.”
The man leading the Biden impeachment inquiry has apparently engaged in nearly identical behavior that he has hounded the president over.
In a scathing new report, the Associated Press found that a shell company held by the chair of the House Oversight Committee James Comer functioned “in a similarly opaque way” as the Biden family’s own companies.
For months, Comer has harangued the Biden family for leveraging their name to conduct business deals and for using shell companies to cloud their transactions with foreign parties and shady figures, indicting the president’s son Hunter Biden on nine tax charges related to the shell companies.
But a series of interviews and records searches conducted by the AP showed that the Kentucky Republican did something remarkably similar, transferring a six-acre parcel of land co-owned with one of his major campaign donors, Darren Cleary, to a shell company he created in 2017 with his wife.
The property has grown in value since its original purchase, jumping from a valuation of between $50,000 and $100,000 at the time of purchase to between $500,001 and $1 million, according to Comer’s financial statements obtained by the outlet. That flies in the face of not only Comer’s self-purported squeaky-clean reputation but also House rules, which require members of Congress to disclose all assets held by companies worth more than $1,000.
“This is actually a real problem that anti-corruption activists would love to get legislative reform on,” Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told the AP. “It is hard to trace assets held in shell companies. His is a good example.”
Last month, Democrats railed on the Kentucky Republican following a Daily Beast report that revealed the first inklings that Comer had engaged in his own shell company, involving intra-family business dealings. At the time, Commer snapped back that it was the kind of thing “only dumb, financially illiterate people pick up on.”
