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Group urges James Comer investigation over remarks about 2015 email leak





GROUP URGES JAMES COMER INVESTIGATION OVER REMARKS ABOUT 2015 EMAIL LEAK

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Joe Sonka   Louisville Courier Journal


A Democrat-aligned organization has asked a Kentucky prosecutor to investigate
U.S. Rep. James Comer over his possible involvement in the leak of a law firm's
emails during his 2015 race for governor, stemming from an admission in a recent
New York Times profile of the congressman.



The Congressional Integrity Project — a 501(c)(4) that is pushing back against
U.S. House Republicans' investigations of President Joe Biden's son and
administration — wrote a letter Wednesday to Fayette County Commonwealth's
Attorney Kimberly Baird, asking her office for a "formal and thorough
investigation" into Comer's "involvement in unlawfully obtaining and/or
receiving stolen emails from a computer server" of the law firm.

"No one should be above the law, and information revealed yesterday in an
article published in the New York Times provides strong reason to believe that
Representative Comer committed at least one, and perhaps multiple, felony
offenses during his failed attempt to secure the Republican nomination for
governor in 2015," wrote Kyle Herrig, the group's executive director.



Austin Hacker, a spokesman for Comer, called the allegations against the
congressman "baseless, false, and a cheap political stunt."



"The Congressional Integrity Project is a dark money, left-wing funded group
whose sole mission is to smear Republicans conducting oversight of the Biden
Administration,” Hacker wrote in a statement. 

Baird said in an email Friday that she had received the group's letter but had
not had time to review the information. Therefore, she said, she had "no
response on the request to investigate the matter at this time."



The New York Times profile of Comer addressed his unsuccessful bid for governor
in 2015, when he lost by a narrow margin in the GOP primary. A few weeks before
that primary election, the Lexington Herald-Leader published a story based on
emails showing an attorney married to a rival candidate's running mate had been
in contract with a blogger who was making allegations that Comer had abused a
former girlfriend.

More:Gerth: Abuse allegations, leaked emails and how Jamie Comer undid his own
bid for governor

The source of those emails used in the 2015 story had not been publicly known
until the New York Times story, which said that "Comer confirmed, for the first
time, that he had been behind the leak and strongly hinted he had gotten them
from the server."



“I’ve had two servers in my lifetime,” Comer told the New York Time reporter
when asked about the emails. “Hunter Biden’s is one, and you can — I’m not going
to say who the other one was, but you can use your imagination.”

Comer added that it "ended up in my lap ... I’ll put it like that.”

Hacker's statement to The Courier Journal did not address a question asking
about Comer's specific actions in relation to the emails and server in 2015.

The letter to the commonwealth's attorney says Comer may have committed a felony
offense of unlawful access to any “computer software, computer program, data,
computer, computer system, computer network, or any part thereof" under state
law, KRS 434.845.

Herrig added that "at the very least," Comer admitted he had "knowingly received
— and then used, distributed, and leaked for his own political gain — emails
that he knew to be unlawfully obtained, in violation of" another state law, KRS
434.855.




The letter closed by noting that there is no statute of limitations for a felony
prosecution in Kentucky, urging Baird to open an investigation and "take swift
action as prescribed by law,"

"Public officials should not be permitted to flout the law without consequence,"
Herrig wrote. "Representative Comer’s conduct deserves a thorough investigation,
and this office should send a clear message that public figures will be held to
answer for their actions."

Scott Crosbie, the attorney whose emails were accessed in the 2015 story, is no
longer with the Lexington law firm in question, now named Hurt, Deckard & May
PLLC. A partner with the law firm did not immediately respond to a request for
comment on what happened to its servers in 2015 and if it ever conducted an
investigation or filed any complaint related to the leaked emails.

More:Kentucky Rep. James Comer to lead House hearing this week about Hunter
Biden's laptop

Herrig told The Courier Journal on Thursday that Americans and Kentuckians
"deserve to know the truth about Mr. Comer's involvement with these hacked
emails," saying that he and House Republicans "continue to show they can't be
trusted to conduct fair and credible investigations."



"They'd rather engage in these partisan stunts," said Herrig, whose group also
called Wednesday for an ethics investigation of Comer's actions regarding the
server. "At the end of the day, Mr. Comer should take a look in the mirror
here."

Baird took over as the Fayette Commonwealth's Attorney last fall, when she was
appointed by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear to replace the prosecutor who retired
from that position.



The Congressional Integrity Project has been targeting Comer with criticism for
months, since he became chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability
Committee in January and gained national prominence as one of the top critics of
the president, his son Hunter and his administration.

Since becoming chairman in January, Comer has launched an investigation
surrounding the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop hard drive, saying it contains
"a lot of evidence" that "suggests Joe Biden knew very well what his family was
involved in. ... We want to make sure that our national security isn’t
compromised because China is an adversary right now."



Comer has also launched investigations in his committee of what it calls the
"radical open borders policies" of the Biden administration and the origin of
COVID-19, becoming a regular face on conservative cable talk shows.

Reach reporter Joe Sonka at jsonka@courierjournal.com and follow him on Twitter
at @joesonka.

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