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 13-page letter from Ernst to Blanche, shared with The Daily Signal, shows examples of email communications from SBA personnel.
Benghazi is most well known to Americans as the location of a 2012 terrorist attack on a U.S. compound that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.
“I write to ask the Department of Justice (DOJ) to open an investigation into the possible unlawful concealment and attempted concealment of federal records by President Biden’s Small Business Administration officials, and potentially their White House colleagues, in their official emails regarding Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider,” Ernst’s letter to Blanche says.
The letter shows that in 2021, Peggy Hamilton, then-SBA general counsel, and other administration officials used official government email accounts in what may have been an attempt to conceal records.
On April 30, 2021, Hamilton sent a message to then-SBA Chief of Staff Antwaun Griffin explaining what she meant by writing “Benghazi” earlier in the day. “Can I schedule a meeting so we can decision Benghazi (Planned Parenthood)?” Hamilton wrote. Griffin replied one minute later, “Yes, let’s talk Benghazi.”
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.”
Hamilton went on to work as general counsel for the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh until December 2025. The Daily Signal reached out to the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh to obtain contact information for the story and also sent a message to Hamilton on LinkedIn on Monday seeking comment. Neither responded by publication time.
Griffin is a general manager at Amazon Business, which did not immediately respond to an inquiry for this story.
