A top Democratic senator calls for review of land deal by Trump's agriculture secretary

WASHINGTON - The chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee is calling for an investigation into former agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue's financial disclosures in the wake of a Washington Post investigation that found his company bought a grain storage plant from an agricultural giant at a fraction of what it was worth - just before he joined Donald Trump's Cabinet.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., is calling for the Office of Government Ethics to review the purchase of the property - worth millions of dollars - for just $250,000 to Perdue's former firm.

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The Post report, published Tuesday, found that Archer-Daniels-Midland paid more than $5.5 million for the same facility just six years prior. That figure matches assessments of the land by independent experts contacted by The Post.

"The findings from the Washington Post article are deeply concerning," Stabenow said in a statement. "I've already called on the Office of Government Ethics to review this situation, and believe that they should expedite their efforts and coordinate with the Department of Justice, the Department of Agriculture, the Inspector General for the Department of Agriculture and other relevant federal agencies to get to the bottom of this."

The Chicago-based ADM says negotiations with Perdue's former company, AGrowStar, began before Trump's election. It denies that it sold the grain plant in Estill, S.C., at a discount.

But a former federal prosecutor and ethics officials say the wide discrepancy between the amount ADM originally paid for the land and its eventual sale price deserves scrutiny from the FBI and other investigators.

The Office of Government Ethics, which spent weeks in 2017 negotiating a deal with Perdue to remove conflicts of interest, did not comment on the land deal Wednesday. The House Oversight Committee did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

If the Office of Government Ethics finds a potential violation, it typically refers the matter to the agency that employed the official.

Perdue, who also served two terms as governor of Georgia, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The 74-year-old former University of Georgia football player was one of the few original Trump Cabinet officials to last to the end of the former president's term, with several other department heads resigning amid ethics scandals. But Perdue, who made much of his fortune in grain trading and real estate, was twice found to have violated Georgia ethics laws while in state office.

The revelations of the land deal may complicate Perdue's efforts to secure yet another office in which he has expressed interest - running Georgia's public university system.

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The land was worth millions. A Big Ag corporation sold it to Sonny Perdue's company for $250,000.