Comer claps back at AP report likening his ‘shell company’ to Bidens
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) fired back Thursday at an Associated Press report comparing “his own shell company” as a rural landholder to tens of millions of dollars that flowed from foreign entities to “shell companies” controlled by first son Hunter Biden and his associates.
Comer, 51, was the subject of a wire service story about six acres of land he co-owns with longtime campaign contributor Darren Cleary through Farm Team Properties, LLC, which is worth between $500,001 and $1 million, according to the congressman’s 2022 financial disclosures.
The for-profit venture reported no dividends last year, according to the congressional disclosures, as well as other documents filed with the Kentucky secretary of state’s office.
The land management and real estate speculation company operates “in a similarly opaque way as the companies used by the Bidens,” the report states, adding that the Kentucky Republican, who has a net worth of up to $7.6 million, is “masking his stake” in the Farm Team Properties enterprise.
Bank records obtained by the Oversight chairman in May show Biden family members and their business associates took in more than $10 million from firms run by Chinese and Romanian nationals through at least 20 “shell companies” — most of which were set up while Joe Biden was serving as vice president from 2009 to 2017.
Recipients of the Romanian funds included Hunter; first brother James Biden; his wife, Sara; the late Beau Biden’s widow Hallie Biden; Hunter’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle; his current wife, Melissa Cohen; and “three children of the president’s son and the president’s brother,” according to a 36-page memo released by the committee.
The Chinese-government linked CEFC Energy also paid the first son and James Biden at least $6.1 million in 2017 and 2018 shortly after Hunter sent a threatening text to one of the energy firm’s executives, Raymond Zhao.
Comer has since drawn attention to checks he obtained showing James Biden transferred $240,000 described as personal loan repayments to his brother Joe, arguing they are proof of “laundered” funds from the CEFC deal and investments in the Middle East.
“My Family Business / Biden Family Business,” Comer said tersely in a post on X, showing a picture of Joe and Hunter Biden grinning above CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming and a Chinese associate from a separate venture, Che Feng.
The post then contrasted the photo with one of the Kentucky Republican and a family member standing heel-deep in mud on his property with a herd of cattle behind them.
Comer paid his brother $200,000 for a land swap involving Farm Team Properties in 2019, according to state records first reported by the Daily Beast.
The report caused a heated exchange between Comer and Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) during an Oversight hearing in November, with the chairman calling Moskowitz a “liar” and “smurf” for scrutinizing his finances.
“You also do business with your brother with potential loans. And so, since you have framed that and manipulated that with the American people, that Joe Biden did something wrong when he wasn’t in office, I just would like to know if you would like to use some of my time,” Moskowitz said.
“I’ve never loaned my brother one penny,” Comer shot back. “My father, who was a dentist, had some farmland. He died and my brother couldn’t afford it. He wanted to sell it but he wanted to keep it in the family. So I bought it from my brother.”
He added that the characterization of Farm Team Properties as a “shell company” by both the Daily Beast — and, by extension, the AP — was “financially illiterate.”
“It was an LLC, they’re so financially illiterate that [they] think because something says ‘LLC’ it’s a shell company,” Comer fumed. “This company … has properties. It manages over a thousand acres of land.”
