House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said today that instead of an investigation into Planned Parenthood, there should be an investigation into the group that shot undercover video of officials talking about selling aborted body parts.
The Center for Medical Progress has so far released two videos with their camera operators posing as a biomedical research company.
Those videos have sparked investigations of Planned Parenthood in the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Judiciary Committee.
“Everybody’s calling for an investigation of Planned Parenthood, let’s have an investigation of those people who were trying to ensnare Planned Parenthood in a controversy that doesn’t exist and just look at the disparity which some of our members have very completely between the actual filming and the edited versions that these other people have put out,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference today.
Her call comes a day after four House Democrats — Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), and Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) — sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and California Attorney General Kamala Harris asking for an investigation into the Center for Medical Progress.
“It is unclear from these reports what forms of fake identification they created, whether any false statements were made on applications for this fake identification, whether this fake identification purported to be issued by or was processed through any state or federal agency, or whether any fraudulent information was transmitted electronically or through the mail relating to this fake identification,” they wrote, adding that the attorneys general should probe “the extent to which this group may have submitted false statements to governmental entities, whether the group transmitted fraudulent information through the mail or electronic communications, or whether this fake company filed tax returns or other documents with the Internal Revenue Service or other federal agencies.”
“I believe the Center for Medical Progress may have broken the law in developing and executing this unbelievably elaborate and troubling scheme, and all Americans should have concerns about that,” Schakowsky said.
Nadler called the videos “nothing more than a witch hunt – an elaborate, possibly illegal, scheme to attack Planned Parenthood, undermine their life-saving work and deny the Constitutional and moral rights of women across the country.”
Pelosi said today that Republicans have “been out to get Planned Parenthood for as long as I can remember.”
“Planned Parenthood has as its top priority women’s health. That’s what they have always been about. One part of it is — and women’s health does include reproductive health. But it’s about breast cancer, cervical cancer, testing and services to women. It’s a very, very important part of the lives of many women in America,” she said.
“Planned Parenthood has said that they have done nothing illegal, they did not ever charge, which would be illegal, for fetal tissue that they’ve only used — only have defrayed the cost of mailing to — that to someone, which is — which is not breaking the law.”
Pelosi said she supported the House Dems who want the investigation. “Women’s health is what is at stake,” she said.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member