(Abdul–Rahman Oladimeji Bello, Headline USA) Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., faced major ethical questions following a Fox News report that he had purchased a luxury condominium from a top executive at a multibillion-dollar energy company.
The company, Dominion Energy, is currently developing a massive offshore windfarm in his home state.
Kaine’s most recent financial disclosure reported that he purchased property worth about $1 million in March 2022.
A further review of the senator’s real estate filings revealed that Kaine and his wife paid $895,000 for a luxury multi-unit condo in Richmond, Virginia.
The Democratic senator (and former Hillary Clinton running mate) purchased this property from George Marget, a senior lawyer at Dominion Energy, on March 8, 2022.
Redfin, an online real estate firm, listed the waterfront property as a “one of a kind” and “one of the largest and finest condos” in Richmond. It reportedly has two master suites, a “gourmet kitchen,” dining room and three parking spaces.
The financial disclosures further revealed that the senator earned about $15,000 leasing the property to its “previous owner.”
However, a spokesperson for Kaine noted that the filing should have stated “previous occupant” as it was leased to a tenant living in the property at the time of the purchase. The spokesperson added that the senator’s financial disclosure form would be corrected to reflect that detail.
Kaine’s spokesperson further downplayed any conflict of interest by denying that Kaine and his wife had personally interacted with the prior landlord.
“Senator Kaine and Anne Holton bought their condo from the Margets in a transaction negotiated by realtors,” Kaine’s spokesperson said.
“The Margets did not live in this condo and instead had a long-term tenant who rented the condo from them,” the spokesperson continued. “This tenant, who was not a Dominion employee, asked whether he could remain in the condo for a period of time after the sale while he looked for a new place.”
In an email to Fox Digital, Dominion Energy spokesperson Ryan Frazier echoed Kaine’s spokesperson in defending the purchase of the condominium.
“In early 2022, Mr. Marget initiated an open sale process of a residential property he owned in downtown Richmond, with a public listing, open house, and scheduled tours,” Frazier wrote. “The sale was negotiated between real-estate agents representing the buyer and seller, with the buyer and seller at arms’ length.”
Kaine is a very vocal supporter of Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, currently in development. It would be the state’s first offshore wind farm and the nation’s largest offshore wind farm once fully constructed.
Kaine has also taken the project quite personally as he has urged federal regulators to fast-track its permit process and has successfully won funds worth millions of dollars for the project.
Kaine’s conflict of interest is reminiscent of a recent attack that his fellow Democrats used to try to besmirch libertarian Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who sold his stake in 40-acre a Colorado property to the head of a major law firm a month after he was appointed to the high court.
Just a reminder that nine days after he was confirmed, Neil Gorsuch sold a 40 acre property to the head of one of the nation’s largest law firms, which has since had at least 22 cases before the Supreme Court.
Gorsuch never disclosed the buyer.
SCOTUS needs a code of ethics.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) May 12, 2023
Kaine and others have been pushing an ambitious attack on conservative SCOTUS justices as part of an effort to undermine faith in the judicial branch and force reforms that likely would include packing the court with liberals to help enact a radical leftist agenda.
Although Kaine did not appear to have weighed in on the Gorsuch attack, he did lodge potshots at Justice Clarence Thomas over Thomas’s failure to report personal vacations with a family friend, Harlan Crow.
“It is well past time for the Supreme Court to align with the rest of government in a proper code of ethics enforced by independent investigation and reporting,” Kaine and his fellow Democrats claimed in a letter admonishing Chief Justice John Roberts.
