How Biden EPA Scrambled To Beat Clock And Route Billions To Political Allies
- July 19, 2025
Audrey Streb, Daily Caller
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.”
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 deadlineto “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.