The great Comer non-scandal explained

So, the Biden Crime Family took tens of millions of dollars from foreign entities. To what purpose they won’t say, but none of them are even registered under the Foreign Agent Reporting Act (FARA). None of them even have a business activity to report related to these payments other than Hunter’s time as a Burisma Director.

But wait! the D.C. establishment exclaims, House Oversight Chairman James Comer bought a half interest in six acres of land in Monroe County, Ky, then put it in an LLC with his wife in 2017. Oh, this could be bigger than Watergate! The guy who sold him the land had given him $1,000 back in 2010 and apparently never again, until 2023. Comer truthfully said, he was not a contributor during the time he sold him the land. Oh, the shame!

Sorry — even for Washington Democrats, this is really pathetic.

I’ve known James Comer for 25 years, going back to his time as a state legislator. He was hands down the most likeable guy in Frankfort among his colleagues, and now in D.C., pretty much the same — that’s why he was a full committee chair after just three terms.

I have not spoken to him lately, but it’s no mystery at all about his finances or his politics. Monroe County is a small place, less than 12,000 people, but one of the bedrock Republican counties in our state, going back to the Civil War. The Comers were long established there, and as a teenager, James got involved with his grandfather in GOP politics and cattle farming on family land.

Like most American farmers, he started small with leased or mortgage-acquired land from relatives and neighbors, then if profitable, acquired more. James was, over 40 years, quite successful, becoming a millionaire farmer/land owner with something like 1,600 acres. Everything he owns and how he got it is public record, in the county clerk’s office. This includes land he and his brother inherited from their father when he died without a will. They then swapped some of the parcels. All this is public record and not a “taxable event.”   

Still, the Dems are complaining that Farm Team Properties LLC should have disclosed every parcel of land it owned, in Comer’s annual House financial statement.

Only they didn’t read the fine print. Very clearly, under the Ethics Committee Instruction Guide, Page 21, for an active business, one need not itemize all business holdings, just state the overall value.

Before he was elected to Congress, the Comers lived in Monroe County, and actively ran their farm operations. That’s important, because active rather than passive farm income carries substantial tax consequences.  Once in Congress, the Comers made their residence in Frankfort, KY, close enough to the Louisville Airport, but they could no longer claim to be active farmers. 

Instead, they now rent out their lands, and his wife, TJ, I assume, claims tax status as what is called an active real-estate professional. That’s why they consider the LLC an “active” not passive business. For the Comers to put their investment money into more real estate through the LLC would be absolutely legal and, as a tax professional, I would say a “no-brainer” smart move to make. 

Nothing sinister at all here. Anyone who spends at least half their working days and 750 hours a year actively running a real-estate related business can claim this tax status. Millions of other Americans have done the same thing. 

James Comer has worked and carefully saved his money since he was in high school, making a success as a farmer and businessman and then as elected official. There he stands at the very opposite end of probity and honesty from the Biden Crime Family.

Hunter Biden owes millions in likely fraudulent tax evasions involving trading on his father’s offices. Several of the bribery statutes the Bidens have violated like the Hobbs Act do not even require the “big guy” to be directly paid; a family member will do. Rest assured, there is already too much evidence and it is building into a mountain against Crooked Joe and his family. I expect in the end, on the way out of the White House, he will issue himself and all his relatives the mother of all pardons.

But for now, we will hear the nonstop stupidity that “Biden has a brother, and Comer has a brother, so that makes it even.” Somehow.

Frank Friday is an attorney in Louisville KY.

Image: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Sevice