On Tuesday, The Daily Signal posted an article about a requested Department of Justice probe into the misuse of funds by the Small Business Administration.
The article reports:
Biden administration officials may have sought to dodge public records laws and congressional oversight by classifying taxpayer-backed loans to Planned Parenthood as “Benghazi,” according to findings by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.
Ernst, chairwoman of the Senate Small Business Committee, has been investigating Small Business Administration loans to the nation’s largest abortion provider under the Paycheck Protection Program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a letter sent Monday to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Ernst asked for a Justice Department investigation “for potential Federal Records Act violation by concealment and/or attempted concealment” of SBA records regarding loans to Planned Parenthood and loan forgiveness.
“What does Benghazi have to do with Planned Parenthood? It appears the Biden SBA used it as a codename to hide the $90 million in taxpayer funds they gifted to the abortion provider,” Ernst told The Daily Signal in a statement.
“I’ve already exposed the Biden administration’s blatant disregard for transparency, but this potential cover-up demands answers,” Ernst continued. “I’m calling for a DOJ investigation to determine if Biden officials were illegally concealing federal records over their egregious handout to Planned Parenthood.”
The article notes:
All government emails can generally be accessed by the public through the Freedom of Information Act and the Public Records Act.
“Under 18 U.S.C. § 2071, an individual who ‘willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to,’ conceal any federal record can be fined and imprisoned for up to three years,” Ernst says in the letter to Blanche.
Ernst contends congressional or public-record requests seeking Planned Parenthood documents from the SBA would miss these records because they were being concealed as “Benghazi.”
“DOJ should investigate SBA officials’ record concealments related to a series of meetings and emails, including an April 30, 2021, email from Peggy Hamilton, the SBA general counsel, with ‘Benghazi (PPP/PPH) Decisions’ in the subject line,” Ernst told Blanche. “This email appears to be the originating email for what became a months-long thread about Planned Parenthood’s SBA loans and the entity’s loan-forgiveness requests.”
It seems as if there are a few people in the Biden administration who are going to have to deal with 18 U.S.C. § 2071. Remember, they are innocent until proven guilty, but if they are guilty, I hope they face the maximum penalty.