Fox networks have aired more than 50 segments amplifying EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s claims that $20 billion in federal climate grants allocated by Congress through the Inflation Reduction Act were mired in waste, fraud, and abuse — while a district court judge last month chastized the agency for failing to provide credible evidence for those claims to support freezing the funds.
According to an April 2 report by The New York Times, a recent lawsuit filed by several grant recipients against the EPA show that “many of Mr. Zeldin’s claims remain unsupported, and some are flat-out false.” In fact, a federal judge said the agency has failed to provide “any evidence with regard to malfeasance,” and a March 26 court filing by the EPA instead “offered another argument for canceling the grants, claiming the climate funds no longer align with the Trump administration’s priorities.”
However, Zeldin’s public campaign to demonize the climate grants – which are intended to reduce climate and air pollution and mobilize public and private capital in underserved communities – and the groups that were awarded them, seemingly continues undeterred on Fox networks.
Appearing on Fox Business on April 3, Zeldin repeatedly peddled suggestions of wrongdoing on the part of those who administered the funds and by the recipients, many of whom are now suing the EPA for breach of contract.
STUART VARNEY (HOST): I want to jump right in to talk about the latest, your investigation into that $20 billion climate program put in place by Biden just before he left office. A judge has told you that you've not provided enough evidence of fraud and abuse to claw that money back. So what happens now?
LEE ZELDIN (EPA ADMINISTRATOR): The grants are terminated and anything that the judge wants to say here is going to be appealed. The fact is there is [an] extensive amount of issues related to self-dealing, conflicts of interest, unqualified recipients. This whole setup was done deliberately to tie EPA's hands behind its back as it relates to oversight and for there to be accountability. We had $20 billion going through eight pass-through entities, many of those funds are then going through additional pass-through entities. Some of these NGOs receiving billions of dollars didn't even exist before they received the money. So I'm not going to apologize for having an issue when some Stacey Abrams-linked NGO gets $100 in 2023 and then $2 billion in 2024. We're not going to apologize when the director of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund is able to kick $5 billion over to his former employer. So all of the evidence that's in front of this judge that explains why we are concerned, if the judge doesn't share our concern, if congressional Democrats don't share our concern, if The New York Times and Politico doesn’t share our concern, none of that is going to change my responsibility and my passion to fight on behalf of the American taxpayer.
VARNEY: I get the impression that the Trump revolution has made a bigger change at the EPA than almost any other government agency.
