“You can’t make this stuff up, folks, but sadly, it’s real,” Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said Wednesday, reporting on X.com that she has officially requested a Justice Department investigation into the Biden Administration’s apparent use of a code word to illegally disguise its funneling of $90 million of taxpayer money to the nation’s largest abortion provider.
“After years of being stonewalled by Biden’s Small Business Administration (SBA),” Ernst “finally gained access to agency communications and uncovered a potential cover-up obscuring $90 million in taxpayer funds Biden officials gifted to Planned Parenthood,” the senator says in a press release regarding her letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Ernst, chairwoman of the Senate Small Business Committee, summarized her findings in one of a series of posts on X.com:
“I uncovered that the Biden administration had given Planned Parenthood affiliates, through the Payroll Protections Program, over $90 million in COVID-era loans — even though they were ineligible!
“Even worse than that, they tried to obscure the fact that they had done this illegally – by using the codeword ‘Benghazi.’”
“If Biden officials intentionally used the codeword ‘Benghzai’ to cover up how SBA funneled $90 million to the nation’s top abortion provider, taxpayers deserve to know!” Ernst wrote.
In 2021, when Republicans began probing how Planned Parenthood received the payments, even though it didn’t qualify for them, Biden Administration SBA officials began sending communications headlined “Benghazi” – the site of a deadly 2012 terrorist attack on a U.S. compound in Libya, Sen. Ernst explained in a Fox News Channel interview:
“Benghazi. What does that have to do with small business, Benghazi?
“A blatant use of a code word to conceal, not only from those of us that are charged with oversight, but from the American people should they ever request information on Planned Parenthood and how they received those loans.”
Planned Parenthood received the small business loans, even though the SBA had previously informed the abortion giant that it did not qualify, primarily due to its size.
“The use of an unrelated codeword would have effectively hidden information related to these programs from any congressional or public record requests – which, if proven, would be a violation of the Federal Records Act and a federal crime,” Sen. Ernst notes in her press release.
Biden’s appointees and SBA employees knowingly concealed or attempted to conceal their records relating to Planned Parenthood, Ernst wrote, telling Acting Attorney General Blanche her letter contains proof of her charges:
“With the records detailed here, and many more I’ve obtained, perhaps now we know why the Biden administration did not want to share its Planned Parenthood records with Congress.”
In her letter, Ernst includes several images of communications appearing to show officials discussing, not only the illicit payments to Planned Parenthood, but also how to handle any concerns and inquiries regarding the payments.
The most damning piece of evidence appears to be an admission of the subterfuge in an April 30, 2021 direct message titled “Benghazi,” in which Biden’s SBA General Counsel Peggy SBA Chief of Staff Antwaun Griffin wrote:
“Can I schedule a meeting so we can decision [sic] Benghazi (Planned Parenthood)?”
“Yes, let’s talk Benghazi,” Chief of Staff Griffin replied.
