Group urges James Comer investigation over remarks about 2015 email leak

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.

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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.