OAN Staff Lillian Mann
6:54 PM – Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Iowa GOP Senator Joni Ernst has formally requested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate the Biden administration over allegations that federal records concerning COVID-19 loans to Planned Parenthood were intentionally misclassified.
In her letter, Ernst expressed concerns that officials within the Small Business Administration (SBA) may have violated federal law by concealing records to evade congressional oversight and public inquiries.
Speaking with Newsmax, the senator framed this investigation as a critical component of a larger effort to uncover fraud within past pandemic relief programs and recover misappropriated taxpayer funds.
Most notably, Ernst maintains that SBA staff utilized “Benghazi” as a internal codeword for these files, a tactic she claims was designed to shield the documents from detection during Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and standard record reviews.
“This is not an uplifting story,” Ernst said. “I uncovered that the Biden administration had given Planned Parenthood affiliates through the Paycheck Protection Program over $90 million, forgave those loans, even though they were ineligible.”
In her letter to the DOJ, Ernst details how the term “Benghazi” — a reference to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya — was purportedly used as a label for COVID-19 relief loans provided to Planned Parenthood.
This specific terminology, she argues, was employed to categorize the funds. By linking the loans to a politically charged event, Ernst argued that there was a deliberate effort to mask the nature of the transactions.
“Even worse than that, they tried to obscure the fact that they had done this illegally by using the code word Benghazi,” she continued. “What does Benghazi have to do with Planned Parenthood? Absolutely nothing.”
Ernst noted that she is backing the SBA Fraud Enforcement Extension Act, which would allow federal authorities more time to investigate fraud cases tied to pandemic relief funds — punishable to up to three years in prison.
“The time to go after those fraudsters is running out,” she said. “We want to allow additional time for the Department of Justice to do their investigations, to go after the fraudsters, and reclaim the American taxpayer money that went out the door fraudulently.”
“We’d love to have a little more Democratic support in this area,” she stressed. “Recipients and respondents in the [SBA] email chains knew Planned Parenthood was not in or even remotely related to Benghazi, yet by continuing the email chain and scheduling meetings, it appears several Biden political appointees, and some SBA employees, were knowingly concealing or attempting to conceal their records relating to Planned Parenthood,” Ernst wrote in the letter.
“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 [Paycheck Protection Program] loans and interest on the loans were forgiven by the Biden administration,” she added.
The misclassification of these communications reportedly began on April 30, 2021, following a series of congressional hearings and formal objections from lawmakers regarding the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) handling of the loans.
According to Ernst’s letter, Peggy Hamilton — who served as the SBA’s general counsel at the time — initiated a months-long email chain regarding Planned Parenthood’s loan forgiveness requests using the subject line “Benghazi (PPP/PPH) Decisions.”
In a separate exchange with SBA Chief of Staff Antwaun Griffin, Hamilton explicitly clarified the code’s purpose, asking to schedule a meeting to “decision [sic] Benghazi (Planned Parenthood),” to which Griffin reportedly replied, “Yes, let’s talk Benghazi.”
This internal dialogue centers on more than $80 million in COVID-19 relief funds distributed in 2020 through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which were intended for small businesses. Planned Parenthood and dozens of its subsidiaries received these funds after “self-certifying” their eligibility, a move that immediately drew criticism from Republican leadership.
The current push for a DOJ probe echoes concerns first raised in May 2020, when more than 20 senators urged then-Attorney General William Barr to investigate the organization, maintaining that Planned Parenthood and its affiliates applied for the relief despite knowing they did not meet the necessary criteria.
“The Paycheck Protection Program established by the CARES Act was designed by Congress to help struggling small businesses and nonprofit organizations by giving them access to low-cost loans for expenses like keeping their employees on payroll during this pandemic,” said the letter. “It was not designed to give government funds to politicized, partisan abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.”
The letter to the attorney general noted that Planned Parenthood had previously stated publicly that it would not qualify for COVID-19 relief loans from the SBA.
The SBA also announced this month that it has referred 562,000 suspected fraudulent loans — totaling about $22 billion — to the U.S. Department of the Treasury for collection.
The loans, issued through the Paycheck Protection Program and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan initiatives, had been flagged as potentially fraudulent during the Biden administration but were not previously referred to the Treasury or the DOJ.
“Each Planned Parenthood affiliate certified that they were an independent qualified entity with fewer than 500 employees,” the SBA said in a press release this January.
“However, during the first Trump Administration in 2020, the SBA preliminarily concluded that none of them were eligible for PPP due to numerous indicators of PPFA’s control over them and their services — including requirements to perform on-site abortions — in violation of SBA’s affiliation standards.”
Among the improper PPP payments were $88 million in loans issued to 38 Planned Parenthood affiliates.
By May 2020, during the first Trump administration, Republican members of Congress had already flagged these loans as improper and later pressed the SBA to agree that local affiliates of national organizations did not qualify for the small business program.
However, the affiliates did not return the funds, and 34 of the loans were ultimately forgiven under the Biden administration.
“It strains credulity to think SBA’s General Counsel Peggy Hamilton was doing anything other than hiding her Planned Parenthood records from Congressional and public scrutiny and oversight,” Ernst wrote. “That’s not something she is allowed to do under federal law, and, as a lawyer for almost three decades, she knew that.”
Stay informed! Receive breaking news alerts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts
What do YOU think? Click here to jump to the comments!
Join the conversation!
Please share your thoughts about this article below. We value your opinions, and would love to see you add to the discussion!