Swansenreport

EPA Chief Zeldin Sends Criminal Referrals to DOJ Over Green Energy Grants

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said this week that he has made several criminal referrals to the Department of Justice and the agency’s own inspector general stemming from his review of Biden-era green energy grants, alleging that billions in taxpayer funds were routed to politically connected nonprofit organizations through a network of pass-through entities.

Zeldin made the disclosure in an interview Monday on the John Solomon Reports podcast, saying his agency has canceled or stopped roughly $29 billion in EPA grants. Among those is a $2 billion award to Power Forward Communities, a nonprofit tied to longtime Georgia Democratic activist and former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, which Zeldin has repeatedly singled out as a central example. He described the arrangement as “self-dealing,” alleging that the pass-through groups had deep ties to former Obama and Biden administration officials, Democratic donors, and former cabinet members.

The underlying fund at issue — the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act — has been the subject of active federal litigation for over a year. The full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals heard en banc oral arguments in February 2026 in Climate United Fund v. Citibank, after a three-judge panel had previously vacated a lower court’s preliminary injunction barring EPA from terminating the grants. The case grew more complicated when Congress repealed the GGRF provision through subsequent legislation, and the court ordered supplemental briefing on what that repeal means for the pending claims.

Democratic members of Congress filed an amicus brief arguing that the administration’s attempts to claw back the funding ignored congressional spending power and amounted to a constitutional power grab, and accused EPA officials of attempting to fabricate criminal fraud allegations.

What Zeldin has not yet produced is proof sufficient to move the courts. One year after he announced the grant terminations — following weeks of alleging the $20 billion program represented a criminal scheme — the Trump administration has not been able to show federal courts evidence of wrongdoing with regard to the fund. The criminal referrals announced this week are exactly that: referrals, not charges. Whether the DOJ acts on them, and what investigators actually find, remains to be seen.

Sources: Just the News, “EPA boss made criminal referrals alleging Democrats ‘self-dealing’ in lucrative green energy grants,” June 2, 2026 — https://justthenews.com/accountability/waste-fraud-and-abuse/epa-boss-made-criminal-referrals-alleging-democrat-self | Climate Litigation Database, Climate United Fund v. Citibank case summary — https://www.climatecasechart.com/collections/climate-united-fund-v-citibank-n-a-_baa314 | Inside Climate News, “One Year After Green Bank’s Demise, Court Mulls Future of Grant-Based Climate Policy,” March 11, 2026 — https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11032026/epa-greenhouse-gas-reduction-fund-court-case/