As congressional Republicans have tried to manufacture a scandal surrounding President Joe Biden, there’s one phrase that’s come up with unnerving frequency: “shell companies.”
To hear GOP officials tell it, the use of such business entities was, and is, inherently scandalous — as if those who would go to the trouble of creating a shell company deserve to be seen as people with something nefarious to hide. This has never been a good argument, in large part because such entities, which are generally created to hold assets, are common and usually legitimate.
A Washington Post analysis from last month explained that many of these Biden family shell companies “are simply corporate entities like one that serves as the structure for Hunter Biden’s law firm and another that’s a consulting company he ran.” The newspaper examined each of these business entities and found that “they were created because this is how business structures often work.”
But for a variety of leading Republicans, “shell company” is synonymous with “shady,” and no GOP official has done more to advance this narrative than House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer.
The Kentucky Republican has obsessively told the public about Biden shell companies, at one point telling Fox Business, “Nobody creates shell companies.”
In hindsight, perhaps Comer shouldn’t have used the word “nobody.” The Associated Press reported: Rep. James Comer, a multimillionaire farmer, boasts of being one of the largest landholders near his rural Kentucky hometown, and he has meticulously documented nearly all of his landholdings on congressional financial disclosure documents — roughly 1,600 acres in all. But there are six acres that he bought in 2015 and co-owns with a longtime campaign contributor that he has treated differently, transferring his ownership to Farm Team Properties, a shell company he co-owns with his wife.
The AP’s reporting has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News. What’s more, the GOP congressman appeared on Fox Business a few hours ago, and when asked about the article, Comer accused the reporter who wrote it of “financial illiteracy.” The congressman’s bluster notwithstanding, the Associated Press’ report added that it’s “not clear” why Comer put six acres in a shell company, and the article raised related questions about the Republican’s financial disclosure forms. From the AP: “It seems pretty clear to me that he should be disclosing the individual land assets that are held by” the shell company, said Delaney Marsco, a senior attorney who specializes in congressional ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. Marsco and other experts were perplexed as to why Comer would place such assets in a shell company, especially since he disclosed his other holdings and does not appear to have taken other efforts to hide his wealth.
This seems like the sort of thing that might be explored in more detail by the House Oversight Committee, though I suspect that won’t happen given that the panel is led by the Kentucky Republican himself.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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