Rep. James Comer (R-KY) has for months used his power as House Oversight chair to assail Hunter Biden’s involvement in a failed business deal with a Chinese energy company.
But The Daily Beast has obtained emails and other documents showing that when Comer was running for governor of Kentucky, he himself was involved in a failed Chinese business deal. It involved importing Chinese hemp seeds through Comer’s office, when he was Kentucky’s agriculture commissioner, to benefit a campaign donor’s company that Comer had fast-tracked for his industrial hemp pilot program.
The documents—which The Daily Beast obtained after the Kentucky government released them to a third party in response to open records requests—contain a stunning revelation: while the emails show the involved parties clearly intended to import only legal hemp, two rounds of tests revealed the plants were essentially Chinese pot, containing illegally high levels of THC—the psychoactive compound that gives marijuana users a high.
The records chalk up the error to the decision to order seeds that “do not have good breeder documentation,” warning that the parties may “run into this issue again.” Emails show an intent to destroy the plants after the second test. If the plants were destroyed, however, it was not documented in the thousands of emails and attachments that the Kentucky Department of Agriculture (KDA) and Murray State University (MSU) produced in response to the open records requests. Records show Comer’s office wanted the KDA to oversee the proposed eradication but the trail at that point went cold—there appears to be no record of destruction or confirmation that state or federal law enforcement ever learned of the illegal plants. No one has spoken of these events publicly.
After the matter was resolved, Comer’s office sent a memo with his seal to program participants, advising on how to handle law enforcement inquiries.
“There is nothing criminal occurring with the projects,” the memo said. “The program is in compliance with both state and federal regulations; there is nothing to hide.”
One bullet point was written in bold. It read: “However, if a request to collect industrial hemp material for a testing sample is made[,] refer law enforcement to contact KDA and do NOT allow the sample to be collected.” The memo suggested contacting the deputy commissioner, noting, “Without a court order, or warrant, you are under no obligation to allow the collection of a testing sample.”
The affair overlapped with Comer’s gubernatorial primary campaign, for which the donor’s company hosted a fundraiser. While Comer made no secret of the industrial hemp pilot program—it was his top legislative priority as agriculture commissioner—emails between him, officials in his office, executives with the donor’s company, and officials at a university involved in the program, reveal an effort to keep the Chinese hemp debacle under wraps.
For instance, in a May 20, 2014, email to four people—including Comer and his chief of staff—an official with the donor’s company wrote that the donor had “confirmed that he has some seed being sent directly to your office from China.” The official added that Comer’s office should send the hemp seeds directly to their academic liaison at MSU—copied on the email—who “agreed to test them.”
The email concluded, “I need to keep this between the four of us.”
Comer did not reply to the email.
The shipment arrived on May 23, according to a follow-up email. It was a sensitive time—on May 14, the KDA sued the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration over the seizure of 250 pounds of hemp imported for its pilot program from an Italian supplier, drawing national attention. The D.E.A. released the Italian hemp one day after the company notified Comer of the inbound Chinese shipment.
Comer has cited the hemp program as a crowning achievement, lauding the project when he tried to recreate its success in the first bill he sponsored in Congress, the failed “Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2017.” However, the Chinese hemp imports—potentially mislabeled “as a decoy” for customs inspection and eventually found to contain quantities of THC nearly ten times the legal limit—were never made public.
‘They want to get in on this’
The company at the center of the story is Caudill Seed, based in Kentucky and the “poster child” for Comer’s program. Caudill Seed had a strong business interest in the first-in-the-nation program, emails show, including a plan to fashion hemp into car door panels.
It’s unclear whether Caudill Seed was an officially sanctioned hemp producer at the time of the shipments from China. Comer’s pilot program made Kentucky the first state to re-legalize hemp production, and while Caudill Seed eventually secured official status, emails around the time of the shipments indicate they struggled to get import permits, and the KDA program website did not mention the company. While local news reports in spring 2014 identified Caudill Seed as a program partner, MSU materials did not. Caudill’s official hemp production application with the KDA is dated November 2014.
Those articles, press releases, and university documents only mention European and Canadian imports. Furthermore, Chinese plants were missing from later reviews of the program. For instance, Tony Brannon, then dean of the MSU School of Agriculture—the school’s point person in the emails and a Comer donor—published a glowing retrospective of the pilot program on Murray State’s website in 2019. The review acknowledged Caudill Seed’s role and congratulated the program for overcoming setbacks such as supplier issues, stigma, and the DEA seizure. But Brannon, who called Comer a “good friend” in the article, did not mention the Chinese hemp.
