Two weeks after bank accounts were frozen amid the Trump administration's vortex of investigations, the nonprofit organization, which is supposed to receive $20 billion to curb climate change, is still unable to withdraw money and raises concerns about its ability to pay staff.
The account was frozen by Citibank, which holds the money, after Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin suggested that it was a possible fraud and that the FBI and the Department of Justice had launched an investigation. These enquiries have moved forward despite their determination Federal prosecutors say there was not enough evidence to open a major ju judge's criminal investigation. Citibank declined to comment.
Zeldin criticizes the policies and structure of the programme created by Congress and run by the Biden administration. He asked for the money to be returned to the federal government, but he has provided no evidence that the crime was committed. This week he called for a third simultaneous investigation by his agency's representative inspector.
Climate United, which received nearly $7 billion under the program to distribute to other organizations, said it was struggling to do payroll Tuesday, with individual project developers unable to withdraw the promised money.
“These relationships are at risk, taking months to build if the funding freeze continues,” said Brooke Durham, spokeswoman for Climate United.
On Tuesday, Climate United's attorney asked the EPA to justify its actions. In a letter to the agency, the lawyers detailed Climate United's efforts to meet with representatives of the EPA, adding that the agency cancelled its February 25 meeting after learning that Climate United's lawyers would be present.
The Trump administration has been trying to spot fraud for the past six weeks related to the distribution of money from the Biden administration's signature climate law, Inflation Reduction Act. The law provides tax incentives for clean energy production and calls on the EPA to issue billions of dollars worth of grants to states, tribes, nonprofits and others to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, a major factor in climate change.
Zeldin is aiming for the $20 billion mandate required in April, which comes from a program called the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, known for its “Green Bank” funding.
Under that, Congress will require the EPA to grant grants to organizations, thus providing loans to businesses, homeowners and others to encourage clean energy across the country, particularly in low-income areas. The funds were held in the Citibank account in the name of the grantee.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris was the program's champion and called it “the biggest investment in fundraising for community-based climate projects in our history.”
The Trump administration has encountered obstacles to curb funding. Dennis Chan, DC's top federal prosecutor, refused to order Citibank to freeze funds.
Last month, she wrote in a letter obtained by the New York Times that she was asked by interim US lawyers in Washington to resign after deciding that there was not enough evidence to launch a major ju judge criminal investigation or order a bank to freeze the bank.
The Trump administration appears to be based on depicting the program in some way as a criminal in a hidden camera video produced by Project Veritas last year.
In the video, Brent Efron, an EPA employee filmed at bars and restaurants towards the end of the Biden administration, is asked about his job by an unidentified man who “surprises him” when he says Efron has tackled climate change.
At some point in the video, Efron refers to “Green Bank.” This tells the person secretly documenting him is a nonprofit organization, making it more financially viable to build renewable energy projects.
Project Veritas edited the video and cut it into another part of their conversation, where Efron was explaining how he ended the rush that required funds that had been approved by Congress before the Trump administration took office.
“We feel like we're on the Titanic. We feel like we're throwing a gold stick from the edge,” Efron said in the video.
Zeldin and other Trump officials now call the phrase “goldbar” to suggest that the previous administration was rushing to spend taxes They are vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse.
But Efron's lawyer, Mark Zaid, said his client, who he described as “a victim of Veritas' project attack,” had not mentioned the frozen funds.
“He's the one who issued the 'Gold Bar' statement that Zeldin continues to grab, but it has nothing to do with the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund,” Zaid said. “He wasn't talking about it. These funds have already been allocated and mandated.”
In a video for Project Veritas, after using the phrase “gold bar,” Efron was asked who was getting the gold bar. He replied, “Non-profit organizations, states, tribes, cities.” “Many of them are small, like local nonprofits.”
Zaid said Efron was contacted by both the EPA Inspector's office and the FBI's Washington Field office agents.
The FBI agents left the card at Mr. Efron's house. Zaid said on behalf of his client he called the agent and told him that he was sent by a prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida. But “it disappeared very quickly. I'm now in discussion with the DOJ and I have a better understanding of what's actually going on,” Zaid said.
He said there was “an strange bouncing that US lawyers were trying to handle the case.”
A person from the EPA Inspector's office (one of many watchdog agencies where Trump has been removed from leaders) sent an email to Efron with Zaid's reply, the lawyer said, but he had not heard a response.
The right-wing media outlet was labelled Greenbank as a slash fund, highlighting the link between the fund's winner and the Georgia Governor's Democratic organizer and former candidate Stacey Abrams.
Abrams served for a year as a senior adviser to rewire America, one of the nonprofits that was seeking $2 billion to manage loans to various climate programs.
The Trump administration also claims that the funds have been awarded to an organization with ties to the Biden White House. Zeldin repeated these conflict of interest claims in his Monday letter to the Commander's Office, seeking further investigation.
John Podesta, who oversaw the implementation of inflation reductions, was a senior climate adviser to the Biden administration, and in an interview, said in an interview that the process of issuing grants is “very tough” and called the Trump administration political motivation.
“We knew they could try to sabotage people who have access to money,” Podesta said of the Trump administration. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has also frozen billions of dollars allocated by Congress for clean energy projects, releasing some of the money only after two judges ordered it.
“We follow the law and they break the law,” Podesta said.
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