James Comer Creates New LLC While Blasting Biden LLCs
Pay Dirt is a weekly foray into the pigpen of political funding. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.
As the impeachment inquiry into the Biden family’s business dealings came crashing down around his ears, House Oversight chair James Comer—who for months has made overblown claims about the Bidens’ limited liability companies—was launching an opaque new LLC of his own.
Comer registered the new company, called “Gamaliel Stargazer LLC,” in Kentucky on March 14, as House Republicans were scrambling to find a way to end their disastrous impeachment probe with dignity.
Previously, Comer’s repeated misleading claims about the Biden family’s LLCs drew accusations of hypocrisy after The Daily Beast revealed that Comer had a shell company of his own. But even though Comer has bristled publicly at reports about his LLC’s activities—which have raised ethical questions—he appears to have forged ahead with this second entity.
James Comer Changes His Tune on Discredited Biden Probe Witness
But given the bar that Comer himself set with months of hyperbolic broadsides against the Bidens, this new company raises similar questions, particularly in light of new previously unreported changes to Comer’s other LLC. In fact, Gamaliel Stargazer is registered at an address co-owned by that other LLC—“Farm Team Properties LLC”—on a piece of real estate that Comer acquired from his brother as part of a land swap in 2019.
In response to questions about his own new LLC, Comer provided a statement asserting that there is nothing innately illegal—or all that uncommon among elected officials—about starting a business.
“I established a new LLC, as many of my colleagues have done, to engage in outside business activities as I am permitted to do under the law,” the statement said.
But, as The Washington Post reported, many of the claims that Comer has peddled about the Biden family’s companies are wildly misleading, trading on broad innuendo that distorts common business practices—like maintaining multiple LLCs—as suggestive of innate criminality. Some of that innuendo can be applied to Comer’s own LLCs.
Comer has frequently sought to frame the Biden family’s corporate entities as nefarious by nature. He’s also cited the Biden LLCs as an excuse for why his investigation hasn’t turned up evidence of wrongdoing.
That pace was already frustrating conservatives a year ago, when Comer told Fox News that the slow progress was in part because of “how many different bank accounts and how many different LLCs that the Bidens had,” citing the existence of multiple LLCs as a “bright red flag.” Days later, he brought the issue up again, saying the LLCs are “the one thing that stands out to me.”
“You know, you’re a business guy, Larry, I’m a business guy,” Comer told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow last April. “The one thing that stands out to me is how many different LLCs were involved that this family had their fingerprints on. And, we really can’t tell what those LLCs did other than launder deposits from our adversaries around the world back to the Bidens.”
Comer even invoked the LLCs three days after he registered Gamaliel Stargazer LLC. On March 17, he told Fox News that the fact that the Biden family operated “multiple shell companies” was among the evidence of wrongdoing that the impeachment panel had gathered.
Comer Mansplains to Reporter on Biden Loans: ‘You Don’t Understand’
Multiple fact-checkers have debunked Comer’s claims that the Biden companies served “no purpose.” Those reviews found that these companies were created to field a range of customary business functions, like investment management, legal representation, and consulting work.
But that same framework suggests that Comer would seem to want answers about his own LLCs. While there’s no evidence of any foreign entanglements, Comer’s companies have raised concerns among ethics experts about whether his financial disclosure forms fully and accurately reflect his business dealings—or whether his own shell company is designed to obscure his own unsavory financial transactions, including a real estate investment with a campaign donor.
The vehicle for that investment, Farm Team Properties (FTP), is described on Comer’s financial disclosures as dealing in “land management and real estate speculation.” And in response to reports about the LLC, a Comer spokesperson described FTP in December as “a privately held company actively engaged in the business of land management, including hunting leasing, and real estate speculation, primarily in farmland,” noting that Comer consulted the House Ethics Committee “years ago” to ensure he was reporting the entity properly.
But The Daily Beast later found that FTP’s actual business interests don’t match Comer’s public statements—including the number of properties it owns, which appear to be far fewer than Comer has claimed publicly.
But of the two properties that FTP does own in public records, one of them is also associated with his new entity.
Comer registered Gamaliel Stargazer LLC at the address of a property that FTP currently owns, which was also the focus of a deal between Comer and his brother in 2019.
That year, Comer and his brother, Chad Comer, inherited the property from their father, who died in early 2019. In July, Comer sold his half of the property to his brother for $100,000. Then, five months later, Comer and his wife bought the full property back, paying Chad Comer $218,000, netting Chad Comer brother an unexplained $18,000 above the property’s total value in July. That purchase, however, included a third party—Comer’s own shell company, Farm Team Properties, which still co-owns the real estate.
When The Daily Beast and Associated Press reported on FTP, the entity had lapsed in its filings with the state of Kentucky, which had revoked its business license. The Comers reinstated the company in December, but when FTP filed its annual report a month later, its stated business purpose had changed.
Oversight Chairman James Comer’s ‘Legitimate’ Shell Company Was Shut Down—Twice
Instead of the previous description—“finance, insurance, real estate”—FTP said it now dealt in “agriculture production - crops.” However, FTP’s publicly listed holdings are only tied to residential and commercial real estate, not agricultural land or crop production. The new description on that January business filing also appears at odds with the “land management and real estate speculation” tag that Comer has given the company on his congressional financial disclosures.
Comer declined to reveal the specific purpose behind Gamaliel Stargazer LLC, only saying the company was created to engage in “outside business activities”—a description that could apply to an almost infinite range of possibilities, including real estate holdings, securities trading, or managing royalties from mining leases or publishing rights.
But in February, Comer and his brother filed a plat in Monroe County, Kentucky, establishing a fresh public record for another piece of land they inherited from their father in 2019, when it was valued at $686,000, according to filings with the county.
That move, according to real estate agents in the area, indicates the Comers are preparing to sell the property. Two weeks later, Comer created Gamaliel Stargazer.
Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.
Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now.
