The Biden administration tinkered with $20 billion that was funneled into newly founded environmental groups just days before the lame-duck president left office, Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin revealed Thursday.
The recently discovered slush fund that was parked at Citibank was last altered on Jan. 13 — a week before President Trump’s inauguration — and quickly doled out to a handful of far-left climate nonprofits with little oversight from the EPA, Zeldin told Fox News host Jesse Watters.
“We have to ensure that there’s accountability here, and we have to make sure the federal government establishes oversight. We can’t afford as a country to have this money wasted. We should have zero tolerance for even a penny of waste and abuse,” the former New York congressman said.
“We have to ensure that there’s accountability here and we have to make sure the federal government establishes oversight. We can’t afford as a country to have this money wasted. We should have zero tolerance for even a penny of waste and abuse.”
Zeldin added that Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel are focused and motivated as they review the tax dollars purposely wasted by the lame-duck president’s administration.
“The Justice Department and FBI have been working very closely with us.”
The EPA administrator announced last month he located the $20 billion that his predecessors squirreled away in an apparent attempt to prevent the Trump administration from clawing back the money and to obscure the eight entities tasked with distributing the funds.
Zeldin, at the time, expressed concern that the $20 billion would be handed out to “far-left activist groups” without any federal oversight, and perhaps even to groups with close ties to the Biden administration.
The climate fund was part of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – a 2022 law that was aimed at combatting climate change and creating clean energy.
The money was eventually funneled into environmental groups, most of which had only recently been founded.
In one case, former Vice President Kamala Harris handed over a check for nearly $7 million to the Maryland-based Climate United Fund just five months after being incorporated in November 2023.
Justice Climate Fund, which pocketed $940 million, was set up in 2023 and has yet to submit a single tax filing to the IRS.
Power Forward Communities Inc., headed by former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, nabbed $2 billion from the public pot, despite also being set up in 2023 and showing only $100 in revenue for that entire year.
The cash for the charity came from a huge $370 billion climate slush fund of taxpayer money overseen by John Podesta, a political consultant who was the chair of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 bid for president and White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton.
Last year, EPA adviser Brent Efron was caught on video describing how the agency hastily parceled out a related $20 billion climate fund that was held by Citibank before the end of the Biden administration.
Zeldin has since pledged to recover the money from Citibank.
“The Biden EPA ‘gold bar’ scheme was designed to limit government oversight while doling out funds to far-left organizations pushing DEI and Environmental Justice,” Zeldin previously told The Post in a statement.
“Of the eight pass-through entities that received funding from the pot of $20 billion in tax dollars, various recipients have shown very little qualification to handle a single dollar, let alone several billions of dollars. I have zero tolerance for waste and abuse at the EPA.”
