For decades, hardworking Americans have watched Washington treat their tax dollars like Monopoly money. Tossed around without a shred of accountability. Handed off to whoever has the right connections. Most of the time, the public never finds out where the money actually lands. But every so often, a scandal emerges that reveals something far more deliberate and far more calculated than garden-variety government incompetence.

The green energy gold rush has long smelled rotten to anyone paying attention. Conservatives warned for years that billions in climate spending had less to do with saving the planet and more to do with padding the right bank accounts. Turns out those warnings didn’t go far enough. What EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has now uncovered suggests a coordinated, sophisticated operation to funnel taxpayer money directly into the hands of political allies — and he’s sent criminal referrals to prove it.

From Just the News:

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin says he has made several criminal referrals after uncovering a major political enrichment scandal that routed billions in Biden-era green energy grants to Democrat cronies. “It’s about self-dealing,” Zeldin tells Just the News.

Zeldin said he has canceled or stopped about $29 billion in EPA grants – including one for $2 billion to a nonprofit tied to longtime Georgia Democrat election activist and failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams – after unmasking a series of pass-through groups used to route taxpayer monies to the politically connected.

Twenty-nine billion dollars. Not a million. Billion — with a B. That number alone should have every taxpayer in America seeing red. And the details behind it are somehow even worse than the headline.

A billion-dollar game of pass-the-parcel

Here’s how the alleged scheme worked. The Biden administration used the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund — a creature of the Inflation Reduction Act, passed when Democrats controlled both chambers and the White House — to stash $20 billion at Citibank. Only eight handpicked nonprofits had the authority to spend it. Convenient, right?

And what a cast of characters those nonprofits turned out to be. Power Forward Communities, the organization tied to Stacey Abrams, reportedly had just $100 on its books the year before receiving a $2 billion federal grant. A hundred bucks. I’ve spent more than that on a grocery run. Yet somehow, the Biden EPA decided this outfit was the right steward for two billion in public funds earmarked for “residential decarbonization.” Abrams has denied any wrongdoing, claiming the grant was meant to help homeowners buy eco-friendly appliances. The hundred-dollar balance sheet tells its own story.

Then there’s Jahi Wise, the former director of the very fund distributing this money, who allegedly “personally oversaw” a $5 billion grant to his own previous employer. Read that sentence again. A government official directing billions to the organization that used to sign his paychecks. Meanwhile, the CEO of another recipient — Young, Gifted & Green, awarded $20 million — reportedly applied for funding while simultaneously sitting on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. The conflicts of interest aren’t just glaring. They’re almost theatrical.

They’ve been running this playbook everywhere

What genuinely shocks me isn’t any single crooked transaction. It’s the industrial scale. Zeldin described finding connections throughout these pass-through entities to “former Obama and Biden administration officials and Democratic donors, people who were former Cabinet members, other high-ranking administration officials.” This wasn’t one greedy operative freelancing. This was an assembly line — methodical, organized, and breathtakingly brazen.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton nailed it: the Biden administration “lawlessly rushed out billions in cash to left-wing interest groups in a way that encouraged fraud and abuse.” They knew they were losing power, and they treated the Treasury like an ATM on the way out the door. The audacity is genuinely difficult to process.

Even the bureaucrats saw through it

Perhaps the most devastating detail in this entire saga is that career EPA staffers — nonpolitical government employees with zero skin in the partisan game — raised alarms during the review process. They flagged “concerns over handing billions of American tax dollars to these groups in addition to the lack of financial background to handle such large sums of money.” The professionals said no. Leadership shoved the money out anyway.

The fight for your money

Zeldin has referred multiple cases to both the EPA inspector general and the Department of Justice. The litigation is grinding forward — a federal appeals court sided with EPA, and the full DC Circuit is now weighing in. This one may ultimately land before the Supreme Court.

“We’re not taking money from left-wing NGOs to give them to right-wing NGOs,” Zeldin said. “This is about getting that money back to the taxpayer.”

For once, someone in Washington is actually clawing your money back. The uncomfortable question every American should be asking: if Democrats pulled this off with $29 billion at just one agency, what else is buried in the federal books?

Key Takeaways

• EPA Administrator Zeldin made criminal referrals of over $29 billion in allegedly corrupt green energy grants.
• A nonprofit tied to Stacey Abrams received $2 billion after reporting just $100 in assets.
• Eight nonprofit “cutouts” funneled Biden-era taxpayer funds to politically connected Democrat insiders.
• Career EPA staffers flagged concerns about unqualified recipients — and were ignored.

Sources: Just The News