OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Editor’s note: The original version of this story quoted Boebert’s claim that a disclosure form from Hunter Biden listed a monthly rent payment to his father and suggested that it could have been a money-laundering operation. Fact-checking done after the fact determined that Hunter Biden was paying the $50,000 in rent for office space, PolitiFact noted. We have updated our story and regret the error.
Roughly seven months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and sent the issue of deciding how best to handle abortion back to the states, a rising GOP star is moving against the one nationwide organization that provides the bulk of them every year.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) has introduced a bill to bar taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, which currently receives about half a billion dollars per year from the federal government.
Her bill would reroute that money to establish “Federally Qualified Health Centers” where Americans could receive cancer screening, prenatal care, and a range of other healthcare services, Fox News reported.
The legislation, called the Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2023, was filed on Friday. It places a one-year moratorium on all federal funds allocated to the organization.
“I’ve introduced my first bill of the 118th Congress. It would defund Planned Parenthood. We need to protect the sanctity of life in this country. To all those marching at the March For Life, let’s rally behind this bill and get it done!” Boebert wrote on Twitter in a post containing a link to the Fox News story.
I’ve introduced my first bill of the 118th Congress.
It would defund Planned Parenthood.
We need to protect the sanctity of life in this country.
To all those marching at the March For Life, let’s rally behind this bill and get it done!https://t.co/RGKzJDd0te
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) January 20, 2023
“The nation’s largest abortion provider has no business receiving taxpayer dollars. Planned Parenthood claims these funds go to healthcare for women, but last year, Planned Parenthood performed a record number of abortions while also reducing the number of well-woman exams and breast cancer screenings it performed,” Boebert said of her legislation.
Last fiscal year, taxpayers ponied up more than $663 million in funding to Planned Parenthood, Fox News added.
“Instead of funding Planned Parenthood, my bill will redirect this funding to community health centers that focus on healthy women, not killing babies,” Boebert added.
So far, the legislation has at least 29 co-sponsors.
In the past, the organization has claimed that defunding it would “really mean blocking patients who depend on public health care funds from getting their care at Planned Parenthood health centers.” But that loss of access would be negated by the establishment of the Federally Qualified Health Centers included in Boebert’s bill.
Last week, the Colorado Republican suggested that a disclosure form from Hunter Biden appearing to list a massive monthly rent payment to his father, Joe Biden, was really a money-laundering operation worthy of an investigation. Fact checks have noted that Hunter Biden paid $50,000 in rent for office space in DC, not to his father to live at Delaware home.
According to the New York Post, Hunter Biden lived at the Delaware home in question, off and on, where recent news reports said classified documents were kept in a garage, suggesting they were not very secure. Also during the same period, Hunter was addicted to drugs, made shady foreign business deals, and fell under federal investigation, all while having access to the documents.
“The now-52-year-old began listing the Wilmington home as his address following his 2017 divorce from ex-wife Kathleen Buhle — even falsely claiming he owned the property on a July 2018 background check form as part of a rental application,” The Post reported.
Post columnist Miranda Devine, author of a book detailing Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop, posted a photo of the application, indicating that he was paying “rent” of nearly $50,000 per month, though the highest rent for homes in that same area, according to a Zillow search, top out at about $6,000 per month.
In 2018 Hunter Biden claimed he owned the house where Joe Biden kept classified documents alongside his Corvette in the garage Via @jj_talking pic.twitter.com/L7c80MRRiS
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) January 12, 2023
That led Boebert to tweet: “Paying $50,000 a month in rent is just not something that normal people do. That sounds a whole lot like a money laundering operation that needs to be investigated.”
On the “Monthly Rent” portion of the form, Hunter claimed he paid $49,910 in rent per month.
The Post noted further that Hunter’s infamous laptop “doesn’t contain any direct evidence of such money transfers but shows Hunter was routinely on the hook for household expenses — including repairs to the Wilmington home.”
Also, a text message found on the laptop from Hunter to his daughter Naomi in 2019 indicated that he gave half his earnings to his father.
“I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years,” he texted in January of 2019. “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
