District Court judge: The EPA has provided no “credible evidence” that the funds are fraudulent or the allocation process was corrupt

The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund authorized a landmark $27 billion for grant recipients to invest in clean and cost-saving technologies to deploy in communities across the country. Of that, $20 billion would be distributed to eight nonprofit organizations through two programs: the National Clean Investment Fund and the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator.

Fox News has referred to the climate fund as “gold bars” (referencing a hidden camera video of a former EPA staffer allegedly describing distributing funding at the end of the Biden administration), “money laundering,” and a “slush fund.” But repeating these phrases doesn’t make them true, and in fact, the EPA’s effort to claw back the climate funds has been rebuffed at several junctures because the agency has failed to provide any credible evidence of wrongdoing.   

On March 12, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan excoriated Zeldin’s EPA for producing no actual evidence of waste, fraud, or abuse, adding, “I can cite cases all day long, but you have to have some kind of evidence or proffer to back it up.” 

On March 18, Chutkan issued a temporary restraining order blocking the EPA from taking back $14 billion of the total, ruling that the agency “had not offered 'credible evidence' in support of its efforts to block the grants, nor had it followed proper procedures in canceling them.” 

Only 2 Fox segments covering the EPA’s climate fund clawback effort after March 12 even mentioned that the judge found no credible evidence to support the EPA clawback attempt. The majority of the coverage dismissed the restraining order as part of a supposed partisan plot to block Trump’s agenda through the courts without even mentioning the details of the order. 

But even before the district court decision, the question of sufficient evidence was raised by major outlets reporting on the February 18 resignation of veteran prosecutor Denise Cheung. Cheung, who headed the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C., resigned after the Trump administration demanded she take action to ensure the climate funds were frozen, because they were the subject of a criminal investigation. Cheung had opposed opening the investigation because she said there was insufficient evidence to do so.

According to The Washington Post, rather than end the investigation, “interim U.S. attorney Ed Martin then personally submitted a seizure warrant application without any other prosecutors in his office that was rejected by a U.S. magistrate judge in D.C.” The attorney general’s office also asked at least one other attorney’s office outside of D.C. to launch an investigation, without success. 

On March 12, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) launched an investigation into potential law enforcement misconduct around the freezing of the climate funds.

Fox News has not mentioned the resignation of the prosecutor who refused to freeze the climate funds, other legal setbacks the Trump administration has experienced in its mission to claw back climate funding, or the Senate investigation into its coverage of the EPA’s efforts to eliminate the climate funds.

The EPA points to a video from Project Veritas as evidence of wrongdoing – but the video’s subject says it wasn’t about the climate fund, and the funding was appropriately allocated

During Fox appearances and in clips aired on the network, Zeldin has repeatedly linked the climate money to a video released late last year by Project Veritas — an organization built on deceitful tactics — in which a purported EPA employee was filmed with a hidden camera saying the Biden administration tried to quickly spend federal money before Donald Trump resumed office. He compared that effort to throwing “gold bars” off the Titanic. 

Here are some examples:

• During a February 15 interview with Zeldin on Fox & Friends Weekend, host Rachel Campos-Duffy teed him up to discuss the hidden camera video, saying, “Speaking of money, Secretary, there was a video that came out, an undercover video from Veritas, that talked about Biden-era officials during the transition period basically saying it’s like we’re throwing gold bars off the Titanic. They were trying to get rid of all this money and put it into NGOs and wherever else they could get it before you guys took power. You say you found the gold bars.” 
• In a February 27 interview on America’s Newsroom, Zeldin also referenced the video and suggested that Biden administration employees were making decisions about funding in the hopes of working for recipients: “The first alarm that went off was in December when this Biden EPA political appointee was saying that their administration was tossing gold bars off the Titanic, with an eye towards getting themselves jobs at the recipient NGOs.”
• On the March 4 edition of The Story with Martha MacCallum, Zeldin explained, “Just to add some additional color on where this all started, in December there was a video that came out — you and I had spoken about it on air earlier — where a Biden EPA political appointee was saying that they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic, trying to get billions of dollars out the door before Inauguration Day.”

But, as Politico notes, the “EPA had already obligated the $20 billion in climate grants months before a conservative activist group shot that video.” 

In fact, the climate funds were not hastily being pushed out the door – the funding was legally appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress in 2022, and grants were awarded through established procedures, with public announcements made months before the election.

Additionally, as The New York Times reported, a lawyer for the EPA staffer who appeared in the video “has since said he was not referring to the $20 billion grant program.” 

The Washington Post also reported that the former employee “had ‘nothing to do with the evaluation and selection’ of the recipients, said a former EPA official briefed on the matter.”

Still, Zeldin and Fox have repeatedly referred to the fund as the “gold bars.” When Chutkan asked the EPA to “justify its moves to freeze the funds and cancel the program,” the agency failed to provide new evidence and instead “referred to unidentified media reports as well as a video released last year by Project Veritas, a conservative group known for using covert recordings to embarrass its political opponents,” the Times reported.

The recipients of the funding included nonprofits that benefit underserved communities like Habitat for Humanity and the United Way 

Fox News and Zeldin have repeatedly suggested that the funds were given to left-wing political or activist groups or prominent Democrats.

For instance, Fox News and Zeldin have repeatedly claimed that some of the funds were improperly awarded to an organization linked to Democratic politician Stacey Abrams, implying she personally received EPA funds. (Abrams was senior counsel for Rewiring America, one of five member groups of the Power Forward Communities coalition that was awarded $2 billion in April 2024; there is no evidence she personally received EPA grant funds nor is she still part of the group). Since the first mention of Abrams in relation to the climate fund on February 20, at least 24 segments have linked her to the money the EPA is attempting to claw back. For example:

• In the February 21 edition of Fox News’ Special Report, correspondent Steve Harrigan reported that “Lee Zeldin claims the money was basically a slush fund to reward left-wing political groups, including one where Georgia Democrat and two-time failed candidate for governor Stacey Abrams worked as senior counsel.” 
• During the March 10 episode of Hannity, host Sean Hannity claimed that Abrams “was granted a $2 billion contract to buy energy-efficient appliances for low-income Americans.”

Largely excluded from Fox's coverage are other recipients that don’t fit the narrative. For example, Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit that helps build and improve homes for low-income families, and the United Way, a nonprofit that helps mobilize donations to address a community’s most pressing needs, from housing to food assistance, were also part of the Power Forward Communities coalition, but Fox News focused almost exclusively on what it described as “Stacey Abram’s slush fund.”

In reality, some of these funds are already flowing to local businesses, community organizations, and working families around the country. The nonprofit grantee Climate United recently invested about $32 million to support clean energy projects in Arkansas that will lower costs and create jobs across the state. And the Power Forward Communities coalition “intends to improve or build 11,000 multifamily and 61,000 single-family homes, spur 64,000 jobs and curb energy bills $1.26 billion over the seven-year grant period.” The awardees have committed to direct at least 70% of funds toward low-income and underserved communities.