 The Lieutenant Governor of Virginia at the time, Tim Kaine, joined Republican lawmakers in calling for a House Ethics Committee investigation into the loan, saying that Moran had made "an error in judgment" by accepting it. In his own defense, Moran said that the timing of the legislation's introduction was coincidental and had nothing to do with the loan. MBNA spokesman Brian Dalphon said that the bank had offered the mortgage package not knowing that Moran was a member of Congress, and that the loan "made good business sense" because with the mortgage loan, "we improved our position by getting security for an unsecured loan .... He had credit cards with us, he was having financial difficulties; this put him in a better position to be able to pay us back from a cash-flow standpoint."
