Audrey Streb
DCNF Energy Reporter
The Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hastily shoveled billions in taxpayer dollars to Democrat-aligned green groups without having concrete agreements in place, according to documents obtained by watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT).
The documents indicate that the Biden EPA awarded grants under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) — a program that shelled out $20 billion to nonprofits linked to Democrat donors and insiders — on a timeline that allowed changes to the terms even after the money was awarded. The Biden EPA had until September 2024 to award the taxpayer funds, and staff were advised to delay outstanding questions and issues in order to meet the looming award deadline, the documents indicate.
“The more information that is revealed about the GGRF, the shadier the entire scheme looks,” Michael Chamberlain, director of PPT, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The irony is that when federal employees finally start cutting red tape and expediting a process, it’s to make sure taxpayer money is irrecoverable to taxpayers. It’s clear from these documents that Biden’s EPA cut corners to get the money ‘obligated’ before the funds expired on September 30, 2024, even if it meant ‘finalizing’ agreements with grantees they fully intended to re-negotiate later. In the private sector, this is the kind of thing that sometimes lands people in jail.” (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Biden’s ‘Gold Bars’ Went To Politically-Connected Orgs Over Internal Red Flags, Watchdog Finds)
2024 EPA 05147 Responsive RecordsPPTFinal by audreystreb on Scribd
Although the money was legally committed in August 2024, the Biden EPA mapped out a timeline that extended revising terms and conditions past the September 2024 deadline to “resolve outstanding issues through December 31, 2024.” Another slide notes the looming deadline and argues that EPA staff needs to “accept that not all questions will be resolved prior to award.”
E&E News reporter Jean Chemnick asked in May 2024 about GGRF’s “transparency and accountability guardrails,” and in response, a Biden official argued that the program had strong oversight when it planned to change the terms after the funding deadline, the documents indicate. The Biden official pointed to other similar EPA programs as examples of the agency’s experience, though the programs listed were either brand new or less than one-thousandth of the size of GGRF, the PPT notes and the documents show.
“Now we really know what throwing gold bars off the Titanic looks like,” Chamberlain said, referencing a video covertly recorded by conservative activist group Project Veritas in which a Biden EPA official likened the rush to fund green groups before Trump’s arrival to hurling money off a sinking ship. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has also repeatedly cited the Project Veritas video in comments about the GGRF.
Several of the GGRF grantees are laden with Democrat donors and former high-level Obama and Biden administration officials. Established under Biden’s signature 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the multi-billion-dollar program budget far exceeded any previous EPA budget. Federal reviewers flagged “excessive” executive pay and questionable financial statements ahead of the final GGRF grantee selections, the DCNF previously reported.
Coalition for Green Capital (CGC), Power Forward Communities (PFC) and Climate United Fund (CUF) are among the three grantees loaded with Democrat donors and insiders that federal reviewers flagged for seemingly unjustified high executive salaries.
CGC declined to comment and PFC did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
CU pointed to appeals court filings which confirm that the terms and conditions were changed in December 2024, though it argued that these changes were not substantive.
“Changes to terms were administrative in nature and provided more clarity around reporting requirements and account controls, as detailed in court filings,” a CU spokesperson told the DCNF. “EPA has not used the changes to terms and conditions as a part of their legal arguments since they were addressed in court earlier in the case.”
Additionally, the CU spokesperson said that adjusting federal grant terms is not out of the ordinary and that the Biden EPA was transparent about the GGRF throughout the program.
“The more you look at this, the worse it gets. Not only was the Biden EPA tossing billions of taxpayer dollars ‘off the Titanic,’ to borrow their language, but under every stone you find more well documented incidents of self-dealing and conflicts of interest, unqualified recipients, and intentionally reduced agency oversight,” Zeldin told the DCNF. “These grants were rightfully terminated months ago, and Congress just fully repealed the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program in the One Big Beautiful Bill.”
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act repealed the GGRF program and rescinded remaining unobligated program funds.
The agency’s inspector general, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI are investigating the GGRF for potential fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars, and Zeldin has highlighted the program as a key example of Biden-era corruption on numerous occasions.
EPA froze 129 Citibank accounts holding the funds in February, and in response, several grantees sued the agency and Citibank, arguing that the freeze lacked legal justification and that the EPA had acted properly in distributing the money. An appeals court intervened to stay an earlier ruling that would have forced the EPA to free the frozen funds.
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Joe was like that storekeeper who was asleep in the storeroom while the rioting looters came in and ransacked his cash register and safe, made off with his takings, and then hijacked his pickup to haul all the booty away.
Then Joe couldn’t fathom why his insurance company rejected his claims because the rioters and looters were actually his family members.
GGRF
Green GRiFt
So this will mentioned on nightly network news, right?
Yeah, you bet. That damned auto-pen has gone rogue again maybe? Couldn’t possibly be Dem and greenie graft, could it?
The picture of Joke is scary. I have seen A FIGURE OF $93 BILLION TOTAL SHOVELED OUT THE DOOR AFTER THE ELECTION FOR ALL the left wing projects. Joke was collecting bribes as Vice Prez with Hunter acting as his bag man – he will not be tried due to his mental state but his activities need to be revealed and those who are not senile be tried.
‘The picture of Joke is scary.’
Reality is scarier. Here’s an image from Biden’s ‘Battle for the Soul of the Nation’ speech in 2022 at Independence Hall – looks like peak Adderall / full Nuremberg to me:
It is mind boggling that people who work their entire lives to raise a family and scrape together enough savings to perhaps retire in modest comfort vote for people who buy private jets to fly to their villa in France just by being close enough to government officials to skim a billion or two into their own pockets.
Not only is there no climate change to fight, they never had any intention of fighting it. The goal was always to get rich with other people’s money.
“The more you look at this, the worse it gets.”
This applies to both the Biden and Obama eras. it is not just the money wasted but a whole lot of the behavior of the people. At least some of this is being and will be revealed. Try to imagine the difference had K. Harris been elected (or Sad Joe). The mid-term elections might alter the pace of revelations after seating in January of 2027. So, there is a year + of green-lighting of such findings. It is getting interesting watching the scurrying of these people with the ethics and instincts of cockroaches.
The Biden administration demonstrates the difficult thing with organized crime is the money laundering. Biden et al were particularly bad at creating plausible stories.
Clima-Change™ increasingly causes the entire climate issue to take on the appearance of being nothing more than one giant money laundering scam.
With public money, our money. Direct unabashed looting of the US Treasury at a scale never seen before. Previous Climate Scams had some asset value, such as land, wind turbines, or solar cells. This unprecedented robbery had no equity at all, not even nominal. We need to build a new max prison to hold the mega-thieves behind this mega-heist — underground, all dungeon, no windows, no exits.
No. I have a better idea. Set aside an area of land they cannot leave, where they will be permitted to live as they demanded other people do – sans fossil fuel (derived) products or services. Let them build that society they imagined and find out how well it works.
“Direct unabashed looting of the US Treasury at a scale never seen before.”
That’s exactly what has happened. The Perps should go to jail.
When you pay $100,000 a plate for dinner at someone’s posh villa in the West Hills you are going to expect a return on your investment. The fact that this administration had to scramble at the last second to facilitate this “pilfering of the Treasury” speaks to their incompetence.
The other side has donors that expect a return on their investments in expensive dinners too. The primary difference is the media actually researches those transactions and reports on their discoveries quickly. It’s that “ hold powerful people accountable” thing, though in these cases you need to insert “…that you disagree with…” to the phrase.
These tactics engaged in by our “institutions”, as well as purging those that question their “authority” (excluding papers from credible sources in assessment reports because they draw scrutiny of the narrative as an example) were used extensively in the 1930s. That didn’t end well for many.
$20 billion could have helped a lot of homeless people and children.
If you gave 20 thousand homeless people a million each, how many would be able to afford a Big Mac meal a year later?
If you gave 20 thousand middle class working families a million each under the condition that they house a homeless person, how many would be looking for a way out of that deal a year later?
If either solution gave 20 thousand homeless people warm, safe places to live, what do you tell the other 750,000 homeless people? How do you choose which ones to tell?
“In 2024, the estimated number of homeless individuals in the United States reached 771,480 on a single night in January. This figure represents a significant increase, marking the highest number ever recorded since the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) began tracking homelessness. The count includes people in emergency shelters, transitional housing, and those living unsheltered.
20,000,000,000 / 771,480 = 25,924
“Recent data indicate an average household income of $66,622 in the U.S.”
“If you’re planning for retirement, one of your key questions is how much you can earn from Social Security — what’s the maximum you can get? As of January 2025, the maximum benefit you can receive at full retirement age is $4,018 per month.Apr 28, 2025”
4018 * 12 = 48216
Donald Trump and the Republican Party are dismantling and scrapping the Democratic Party’s kickback machine; one appropriation, one grant, and one subsidy at a time.
If all the t’s haven’t been crossed and all the i’s been dotted then it is time to demand that everyone who received money in this fashion justify why they should keep the money and exactly how it will be spent. Be prepared to give it back we are not running a charity here.