The Biden administration is facing fresh allegations that senior officials quietly engineered and concealed the forgiveness of roughly $90 million in pandemic-era small business loans to Planned Parenthood, despite clear rules barring the abortion giant from receiving such funds.
According to Hot Air, the revelations stem from reporting by Luke Rosiak of the Daily Wire and from new documents obtained by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who chairs the Senate committee overseeing the Small Business Administration (SBA). Ernst and other Republicans say the records show a deliberate effort by Biden officials to circumvent both the law and congressional oversight in order to protect Planned Parenthood, a key institution of the Lefts cultural and political infrastructure.
The controversy traces back to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), created in 2020 as part of the CARES Act to keep small businesses afloat during the COVID shutdowns. In the rush to stave off economic collapse, the Trump administration allowed entities to self-certify their eligibility, a decision that opened the door to abuse and, in this case, to what critics now describe as a massive windfall for Planned Parenthood.
Trumps handling of COVID remains one of the most contentious aspects of his presidency, and conservatives have long argued that the emergency spending apparatus was ripe for exploitation by Democrats and their allies. Here, that vulnerability appears to have been exploited by one of the Lefts most powerful organizations, which self-certified as a small business despite having a sprawling national network and thousands of employees.
In the early days of the 2020 pandemic, the first Trump administrations Small Business Administration sent more than $80 million in COVID loans reserved for small businesses to Planned Parenthood and 38 affiliates after they self-certified as eligible. Once the SBA took a closer look, officials determined that Planned Parenthood and its affiliates did not qualify as small businesses under the law and informed them that the money should be returned.
More than 90 Republican members of Congress wrote to the agency, noting that under the rules of the CARES ACT, a nonprofit that exceeds 500 employees, as Planned Parenthood did, was not a small business and should be deemed disqualified from PPP loans. Under existing SBA rules, organizations affiliated with a larger national entity are not considered independent small businesses, which should have disqualified Planned Parenthoods web of affiliates from the start.
Planned Parenthood, however, did not return the funds. Once Joe Biden took office, Ernst and other Republicans say, the new administration not only declined to claw back the money but conspired to let them keep the money, and even threw more at them.
Biden administration officials may have broken the law by concealing small business loans to Planned Parenthood, a senator said Monday. Small Business Administration officials disbursed and forgave loans to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates even after the agency determined that the group is not a small business that would be eligible.
The most explosive allegation is that top SBA officials, including Biden-appointed Administrator Isabella Guzman, deliberately used a code wordBenghaziin internal communications to hide their Planned Parenthood discussions from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) searches and congressional scrutiny. Top officials, including Biden SBA Administrator Isabella Guzman, concealed their maneuvering on the topic by substituting the words Planned Parenthood with Benghazi in emails, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who chairs the committee that oversees the agency, revealed Monday.
We now know that after the SBA Biden officials met, planned and strategized (over Benghazi), keeping the White House involved, approximately $90 million in Planned Parenthood SBA PPP loans and interest on the loans were forgiven by the Biden administration, she said. Ernst has now asked the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation, citing a federal statute that makes it a crime to conceal or attempt to conceal federal records, with penalties of up to three years in prison.
Ernst asked the Department of Justice to investigate the officials under a statute that says anyone who attempts to conceal a federal record can be imprisoned for up to three years, according to a letter first obtained by The Daily Wire. In April 2021, as Republicans pressed for answers, they demanded to know the steps the agency took once Planned Parenthood affiliates were deemed ineligible for SBA loans, Ernst wrote.
That same month, the SBAs top lawyer, General Counsel Peggy Hamilton, convened senior officials under an email subject line that left little doubt about the code in use: Benghazi (PPP/PPH) Decisions. The context suggested that Benghazi was a code word for Planned Parenthood.
The email tasked staff with reviewing loans to non profit PPP applicants to decision whether affiliation bars eligibility WH has been engaged. Need to inform WH as decisions are made.
In a direct message, Hamilton made the code explicit, writing, Can I schedule a meeting so we can decision Benghazi (Planned Parenthood)?
Yes, lets talk Benghazi, came the reply. Ernst underscored the implications of this subterfuge, noting that If someone tried to search for government records related to Planned Parenthoods loans and loan forgiveness this meeting would not have appeared, as again it was concealed as Benghazi.
PPH is not an acronym used for the abortion provider, which is sometimes initialized PPFA, for Planned Parenthood for America, she said. If other SBA Biden officials are complicit in conspiring with SBAs General Counsel Peggy Hamilton and Administration Guzman to conceal or attempt to conceal federal records and evade public records retention laws, that is in clear violation of 18 U.S.C. S2017 and deserves investigation for potential Federal Records Act violations, Ernst said.
For conservatives, the choice of Benghazi as a codename is as revealing as it is offensive.
I would love to know how the Biden folks came up with the codename Benghazi. Perhaps they see a connection between murdering babies and the Obama-era fiasco that left Americans dead, or perhaps it was a tribute to Hillary Clinton.
The comparison is not accidental: Benghazi has long symbolized, for the Right, a lethal mix of incompetence, political spin, and stonewalling by Democratic administrations. If you think this tactic seems reminiscent of organized crime, that's because the Biden administration was a criminal organization.
It was, of course, the agency lawyer who organized this criminal conspiracy to hide illegal loans to Planned Parenthood, because that is how Democrat lawyers roll. The documents suggest that the conspiracy, though, seems to have gone all the way to the White House, which again is no surprise.
Luke Rosiaks reporting indicates that the most straightforward legal exposure may lie in the apparent effort to evade federal records laws, rather than in the underlying decision to forgive the loans. Luke's story seems to indicate that the violation that might stick is the breaking of the federal records law. I'm not sure why conspiring to just hand over $90 million in forgivable loans to an ineligible organization wouldn't be, but I am no lawyer.
It should be. For many on the Right, this episode is yet another illustration of how the COVID emergency became a pretext for Democrats to funnel taxpayer money to ideological allies, shielded by bureaucratic opacity and legal maneuvering.
The core questions now are whether the Department of Justice will take Ernsts referral seriously and whether Congress will use its oversight powers to compel testimony and document production from SBA and White House officials. If the facts hold up as described, the controversy will not only deepen conservative distrust of the Biden administration but also reignite calls to reform emergency spending programs and tighten safeguards against politicized lawfare inside the federal bureaucracy.
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