Representative James Comer once accidentally imported Chinese marijuana on behalf of one of his donors. The massive Mary Jane mistake, from a politician who has gone on to decry doing business with the foreign superpower, was never made public—until now.
Correspondence obtained by The Daily Beast from a third-party group through a records request, shows that a shipment of “hemp” Comer acquired nearly a decade ago tested 10 times higher than the legal limits for THC. While the emails suggest there were plans to destroy the gaffed ganja, it’s still unclear what became of the shipment, which the U.S. government would classify as marijuana.
After Comer was elected as Kentucky’s commissioner of agriculture in 2011, he embarked on an industrial hemp pilot program, which he has since touted as one of the triumphs of his career.
As part of the program, Comer worked with Caudill Seed, a company that he’d previously awarded as a “Kentucky Proud Partner in Excellence.” Brothers and company executives COO Sanford “Dan” Caudill and CEO Pat Caudill reportedly only became interested in working with hemp seeds after speaking with Comer when he was running for the office. That year, both brothers donated the maximum to Comer’s campaign, according to the Beast.
Comer was reportedly aware that Caudill Seed had a relationship with Chinese suppliers, and in June 2014, a box labeled “rape seed” arrived at Comer’s office from China. Caudill Seed had pushed Comer’s office to order hemp seeds from China because it did not require an export permit. When Comer’s chief of staff questioned why the box was mislabeled, Caudill Seed employees Lori Thomas and Carl Gering speculated that it was mislabeled “as a decoy.”
The Morehead State University School of Agriculture, which had agreed to test the seeds, planted them shortly after. When it came time to harvest in September, it was clear that something was off. Gering wrote an email to MSU Dean Tony Brannon beginning, “FYI—your eyes only,” disclosing that after the shipment had been transported on a permit from Comer’s office, the driver had complained that the shipment smelled overwhelmingly like weed.
When the plant was tested for THC levels, the results confirmed the driver’s sense of smell. “We have hemp seed with a THC content of 1.87 and 2.74%,” Gering wrote in an email to his boss, results which the Beast has confirmed. The legal limit for hemp is 0.3 percent. Anything higher is considered marijuana.
During the following months, a back-and-forth ensued between Caudill Seed, Comer’s office, and MSU about what to do with their pot; retest or destroy seemed to be the two prevailing options. Despite the growing problem, in November, Caudill Seed threw Comer a fundraiser for his gubernatorial campaign, which netted more donation max-outs from the brothers and their family members. In January, another round of testing confirmed the hemp was not up to standard.
Caudill, Brannon, and Gering agreed to destroy the plant and keep the incident quiet, but they reached out to Comer’s office anyway. Brannon submitted MSU’s production report to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, including the THC results, but did not comment on them. An official with Comer’s office advised holding off on destroying the plant until the KDA could oversee its disposal. After that, the correspondence ends, and it’s unclear what happened to the plant.
Comer later sent a memo to his office, insisting that there was “nothing criminal occuring with the projects” and that the program was “in compliance with both state and federal regulations; there is nothing to hide.” The same email advised employees not to comply with requests for testing samples from the federal government and to instead contact the KDA.
Donations from the Caudills and Brannon have slowly shrunk as Comer moved into Congress, where he has adamantly opposed doing business with China and criticized President Joe Biden for giving China “access to our markets” during his time as vice president. Comer has also repeatedly attacked Biden’s son Hunter for business dealings with China.
“The most illegal thing in the world for anyone in Washington is to take money from foreign nationals from China,” Comer told Mike Huckabee last August.
Source Agencies
