Raja Krishnamoorthi

• Pandemic-program role: Member, Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, Committee on Oversight and Reform.
• Institution — office: U.S. House · Illinois 8th District · Type: elected official / oversight member
• Tenure (relief-relevant): Elected to Congress in 2016; questioned pandemic-relief oversight witnesses at Select Subcommittee hearings in March 2021 and June 2022.

Identity and role

Raja Krishnamoorthi, Democrat of Illinois, represents Illinois' 8th Congressional District. His official House biography states that he "was elected to Congress in 2016 and is now in his fifth term representing Illinois' 8th District," and lists earlier service as Special Assistant Attorney General in Illinois' Public Integrity Unit, as a member of the Illinois Housing Development Authority and as Illinois Deputy Treasurer, and degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Law School.¹

In the 117th Congress he sat on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, chaired by James Clyburn; the front matter of the subcommittee's printed hearing records lists him among its members.²³

Pandemic-relief / PPP-EIDL role

March 25, 2021 — Select Subcommittee hearing on small-business relief fraud. The subcommittee noticed the hearing as "Lowering the Guardrails: How the Trump Administration Failed to Prevent Billions in Pandemic Small Business Fraud"; the attendance roster⁴ and the majority staff memorandum circulated to members that day⁵ carry that title. The Government Publishing Office printed the record as "Rooting Out Fraud in Small-Business Relief Programs" (Serial No. 117-12).² The staff memorandum describes "new evidence obtained by the Select Subcommittee regarding the scope of fraud in the Small Business Administration's (SBA's) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program."⁵ The roster records Krishnamoorthi present alongside Clyburn, Maxine Waters, Carolyn Maloney, Bill Foster and Jamie Raskin.⁴

Questioning SBA Inspector General Hannibal "Mike" Ware at that hearing, Krishnamoorthi cited the SBA OIG report finding that "almost 320,000 potentially fraudulent COVID-19 EIDL loans totaling almost $25 billion were disbursed to people with the same email addresses," and the report's example of one applicant who received ten loans in the names of ten bathroom-renovation companies in one city, none of which could be found, at an email address that belonged to a burrito restaurant. He asked what was being done to stop multiple applications from one email address; Ware said the Office of Disaster Assistance had assured his office that a secondary review process was in place and added: "We have not verified or validated that that is in place and working as yet."² Krishnamoorthi then asked Ware whether he could rule out coordination between applicants and SBA insiders, or payments to foreign actors, to deceased people or to people under 18; Ware answered that he could not rule out any of them. With PRAC Chair Michael Horowitz he discussed False Claims Act and qui tam claims, and Horowitz said recoveries from pandemic-fraud investigations then totalled "tens of millions of dollars overall."²

June 14, 2022 — Select Subcommittee hearing on federal pandemic-fraud enforcement. The printed record of "Examining Federal Efforts to Prevent, Detect, and Prosecute Pandemic Relief Fraud to Safeguard Funds for All Eligible Americans" (Serial No. 117-86, CHRG-117hhrg47805) records Krishnamoorthi present and recognized out of order for his five minutes.³ He said the subcommittee had released a report that day and that its analysis showed "98 percent of DOJ's prosecutions of fraud against the EIDL program involved fraudulent applications submitted during the Trump administration," and that "under the Trump administration, loan reviewers at the SBA were directed to approve applications for the EIDL program even when they had red flags that indicated potential identity theft."³ Asked whether approving EIDL applications despite identity-theft red flags would increase the likelihood of fraud, Ware answered: "Yes, it would." Asked whether abandoning SBA's pre-pandemic "rule of two control," under which two employees reviewed and approved a loan application, increased that likelihood, Ware answered: "Yes, it did." Horowitz told him that speed "overrode any controls whatsoever" early in PPP and EIDL and that 57,000 PPP applications came from applicants on the Do Not Pay List; Ware put the amount involved in those loans at "$3.6 billion."³

Where they are now (2025–2026)

His official House biography lists him in his fifth term for Illinois' 8th District, on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the Chinese Communist Party, and as Ranking Member of the Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services.¹

Sources held in this archive

Original source documents and archived captures

• Official House biography, krishnamoorthi.house.gov (captured Sept. 18, 2026)
• Select Subcommittee, member attendance roster, "Lowering the Guardrails" (Mar. 25, 2021)
• Select Subcommittee majority staff memorandum, "Lowering the Guardrails" (Mar. 25, 2021)
• Select Subcommittee, hearing transcript, "Rooting Out Fraud in Small-Business Relief Programs" (Mar. 25, 2021, Serial No. 117-12)
• Select Subcommittee, hearing transcript, "Examining Federal Efforts to Prevent, Detect, and Prosecute Pandemic Relief Fraud…" (June 14, 2022, Serial No. 117-86)

Sources

1. Office of Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, official biography, krishnamoorthi.house.gov/about (captured Sept. 18, 2026; text extract). Archive: krishnamoorthi-house-gov-official-biography_2026-09-18 · Official biography of Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (original: krishnamoorthi.house.gov) ↩
2. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, "Rooting Out Fraud in Small-Business Relief Programs," Mar. 25, 2021 (Serial No. 117-12), preliminary transcript. Archive: 2021-03-25 hearing transcript ↩
3. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, "Examining Federal Efforts to Prevent, Detect, and Prosecute Pandemic Relief Fraud to Safeguard Funds for All Eligible Americans," June 14, 2022 (Serial No. 117-86, CHRG-117hhrg47805). Archive: 2022-06-14 hearing transcript ↩
4. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, member attendance roster, "Lowering the Guardrails: How the Trump Administration Failed to Prevent Billions in Pandemic Small Business Fraud," Mar. 25, 2021. Archive: hhrg-117-vc00-20210325-mbrroster ↩
5. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, majority staff memorandum to Members, "Lowering the Guardrails: How the Trump Administration Failed to Prevent Billions in Pandemic Small Business Fraud," Mar. 25, 2021. Archive: 2021-03-25 staff memorandum ↩