'It is illegal': Top House GOPer caught doing the exact same thing he accused Biden of

07 June 2024

Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), who has spent the last few years finding ways to hound President Joe Biden and his family as chair of the House Oversight Committee, was just found to have done the same thing he previously accused Biden of doing.

The Daily Beast reported on emails it obtained confirming that during the four-year period when Comer was Kentucky's Agriculture Commissioner, he used at least two different email aliases to conduct official government business. This is noteworthy, as Comer has suggested on multiple occasions that Biden used email pseudonyms to conceal potential criminal activity in relation to his son, Hunter, and foreign business deals he was conducting.

According to the Beast, Comer had at least two known pseudonymous email accounts — both named for his son, Harlan (Harlan is also a county in Southeastern Kentucky) — harlan2@ky.gov and harlan.comer@ky.gov. He used these interchangeably for government business along with his official email at the time, james.comer@ky.gov.

Former Kentucky assistant attorney general Amye Bensenhaver told the Beast that a pseudonymous email was a "fairly common practice" in order to "ensure vital official records are saved separately." She added, however, that “if the purpose is concealing it, it is wrong, it is illegal.”

In one instance, Comer used one of the email pseudonyms to discuss hemp regulations. A campaign donor who referred to Comer as a "good friend" when he was the Bluegrass State's agriculture commissioner sent numerous emails to Comer's pseudonymous accounts. One of these aliases, "Jamie," was in use when the two were working on revisions for a hemp-related presentation.

That donor, Dan Caudill of Caudill Seed, thanked Comer for using the power of his office to intervene and reduce a $2,500 fine for fumigation violations down to $250. In addition to the fine, Caudill had to attend two fumigation-related classes. He sent the message thanking the commonwealth's agriculture secretary not to his official email, but to the "harlan.comer" account.

"Of course that is better than paying the $2,500. So, here again it looks like the Kentucky Department of Agriculture is being much fairer than they were under the previous administration and I give you the credit for that," he wrote.

Comer helped Caudill and his company land a hemp cultivation partnership. However, hemp seeds Comer helped Caudill import from China ended up testing as marijuana, which is still illegal to cultivate in Kentucky. By May of 2015, deputy agriculture commissioner Steve Kelly emailed someone within the agency's office instructing them to stop sending emails to the pseudonymous accounts, saying they had been shut down.

As House Oversight Committee chairman, Comer has repeatedly insisted that President Biden hid behind email aliases in order to evade public records requests and conceal illegal activity. However, the New York Times last year dug into the messages behind the Biden pseudonyms and found that they were limited to "banal content and personal information." The Times added that the pseudonyms had already been known to exist for roughly two years.

Click here to read the Beast's full report in its entirety (subscription required).

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