The Biden administration thought they’d gotten away with the perfect crime.
They had a foolproof scheme to funnel taxpayer dollars to their political allies.
But Lee Zeldin exposed one truth about Biden’s EPA that caught Democrats red-handed.
Biden’s EPA turned into a political slush fund for Obama and Biden cronies
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin didn’t waste any time after getting confirmed by the Senate.
He knew the Biden administration had been up to something shady with billions in taxpayer dollars during their final weeks in office.
What Zeldin uncovered was even worse than anyone imagined.
During an appearance on The Post’s "Pod Force One" podcast with Miranda Devine, Zeldin revealed how Biden EPA officials scrambled to shovel $20 billion out the door before Trump took office.
"When I was going through the confirmation process [in January], this video comes out," Zeldin recalled. "It was done through Project Veritas, but it was of a Biden EPA employee who was talking about how the agency was tossing gold bars off the Titanic, rushing to get billions of dollars out the door before Inauguration Day."
But here’s the kicker – the Biden EPA employee also admitted "the desire to get themselves jobs at the recipient NGOs."
These weren’t public servants looking out for America.
They were political operatives setting themselves up for lucrative paydays after leaving government.
Zeldin and his team started digging with what he called "great enthusiasm and eagerness."
"Basically, every time we overturned a rock, we found something under it that was either filled with self-dealing and conflicts of interest, unqualified recipients or reduced agency oversight," Zeldin told Devine.
The scope of the corruption was breathtaking.
Biden’s EPA had "parked" $20 billion at Citibank and then sent it through eight different pass-through entities – NGOs loaded with former Obama and Biden officials and Democrat donors.
And here’s how they covered their tracks: once the money went through the prime recipients to other pass-throughs, the EPA was no longer party to any oversight agreement.
"EPA is losing oversight by design intentionally," Zeldin explained.
Stacey Abrams and her allies cashed in big time
The beneficiaries of this taxpayer-funded gold rush read like a who’s who of Democrat political operatives.
Take Power Forward Communities, a coalition that includes an organization linked to two-time Georgia gubernatorial loser Stacey Abrams.
This outfit received a measly $100 in 2023.
Then Biden’s EPA handed them $2 billion in 2024.
But wait – it gets worse.
The Biden EPA actually put a requirement in their grant agreement that Power Forward Communities needed to complete training on "How to develop a budget within 90 days."
Think about that for a second.
The Biden EPA admitted these people didn’t know how to develop a budget, yet they gave them $2 billion anyway.
And what did Power Forward Communities do with all that taxpayer money?
They started paying themselves outrageous salaries.
Their CEO raked in $800,000, the COO got $450,000, and 22 people were pulling down over $150,000 each.
Even Biden EPA officials complained that "executive salaries appear excessive" and "senior management salaries are seemingly high without justification."
Abrams worked as senior counsel for Rewiring America, one of the nonprofits under the Power Forward Communities umbrella, until the end of 2024.
Funny how she happened to be positioned perfectly to benefit from this taxpayer-funded windfall.
The waste was absolutely staggering
Zeldin found example after example of incompetence and corruption throughout the $20 billion slush fund.
Appalachian Community Capital got about $500 million from the fund in 2023.
How much have they actually spent so far?
Under $4.5 million.
But here’s the best part – a Biden EPA official reviewing their plan found they wanted to spend $215 million to finance 600 zero-emission vehicles and $105 million for 700 charging stations.
Do the math on that.
"This is $358,333 per EV vehicle," the reviewer wrote, adding that $150,000 per charging station "seems too high."
That’s not government incompetence – that’s systematic looting of the Treasury.
The $20 billion came from the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that Congress created in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
But when Zeldin tried to track where the money actually went after it left these pass-through entities, he hit a brick wall.
"You can ask me 10, 15, 20 of the first most important questions that come to mind as far as where the money was going after it leaves the pass-through entities," Zeldin said. "And the crazy thing is how little I would be able to answer, even today."
Zeldin fought back and the left sued him for it
Zeldin didn’t just document the corruption – he took action.
He moved to cancel the outstanding climate grants back in March.
The affected nonprofits immediately ran to court to try and stop him from ending their taxpayer-funded gravy train.
"There was, by far, way too much waste and abuse as a systemic programmatic issue, where we had to take action quickly, which we were happy to do," Zeldin explained.
Zeldin made it clear he’s not playing political games with taxpayer dollars.
"I don’t want to take money from a left-wing activist group and give it to a right-wing activist group," he said. "I think that the American public are, they’re fed up with the bulls***," he said bluntly. "And they want people in government to fight for them, to be a good steward of their tax dollars, and they don’t want to get gaslit by congressional Democrats."
And you know what? This whole thing proves exactly what conservatives have been saying for years about how the swamp really works.
Democrat politicians don’t leave office and disappear into the private sector like normal people.
They create elaborate networks of nonprofits and NGOs that exist for one purpose – to keep the political gravy train rolling with taxpayer dollars.
The Biden administration turned the EPA into their personal ATM, funneling billions to political allies who then hired the same government officials who approved the grants in the first place.
It’s a revolving door of corruption that would make the most creative organized crime families jealous.
Think about it – Stacey Abrams loses two governor races in Georgia, but somehow she ends up perfectly positioned to benefit from a $2 billion government handout.
These people never actually lose because they’ve rigged the system so taxpayers always end up paying them anyway.
Zeldin deserves credit for exposing this scheme and shutting it down.
But this is exactly why Americans voted for Trump – they’re tired of watching their tax dollars get funneled to political cronies while they struggle with inflation and high energy costs.
The swamp thought they could pull off one last heist on their way out the door.
Thanks to administrators like Lee Zeldin, they got caught red-handed.
¹ Ryan King, "Lee Zeldin tells ‘Pod Force One’ how Obama and Biden alums cashed in on $20B climate ‘slush fund,’" New York Post, August 20, 2025.
