(LEX 18) — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is among 27 GOP senators calling on Attorney General William Barr to investigate loans received by Planned Parenthood.
In a letter sent to Barr, the senators claim Planned Parenthood affiliates received about $80 million in loans from the Paycheck Protection Program but should have been ineligible — a claim that Planned Parenthood disputes, according to POLITICO.
"[The Paycheck Protection Program] was not designed to give government funds to politicized, partisan abortion providers like Planned Parenthood," the senators write in the letter. "The funds in the program are not unlimited, and were depleted once already because of high demand. Planned Parenthood fraudulently taking tens of millions of dollars that were intended to help keep those small businesses and nonprofit organizations afloat cannot stand and must be addressed."
"This is a clear political attack on Planned Parenthood health centers and access to reproductive health care," Jacqueline Ayers, Planned Parenthood Federation of America vice president of government relations and public policy, writes in a statement. "It has nothing to do with Planned Parenthood health care organizations' eligibility for COVID-19 relief efforts, and everything to do with the Trump administration using a public health crisis to advance a political agenda and distract from their own failures in protecting the American public from the spread of COVID-19."
POLITICO reports the Justice Department acknowledged receiving the senators' request to investigate the matter but didn't elaborate.
"We have received and are reviewing the letter," department spokesperson Peter Carr said.
