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EXCLUSIVE: The EPA Demands an Accounting of the $20 Billion Climate Fund
Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. (Tom Williams via Getty Images)
‘If you ask me where all this money is going,’ says EPA head Lee Zeldin, ‘I actually don’t know.’
By Madeleine Rowley
03.06.25 — U.S. Politics
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On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency sent letters of inquiry to the eight nonprofit recipients chosen by the Biden administration to receive grants from the $20 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund in April 2024. The letter asks, among other things, what exactly the nonprofits plan to do with the money.

The letters were sent on the same day that a Free Press investigation revealed that the $20 billion was shoveled into around 129 Citibank accounts in the interregnum between President Trump’s election and his inauguration. Currently, $16.9 billion remains in those accounts, which have been frozen by Citibank. The Free Press investigation also uncovered connections between the nonprofit CEOs and executives and the Biden and Obama administrations.

In the letter sent by the EPA’s acting deputy administrator, W.C. McIntosh, to the nonprofits, the EPA asks them to:

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Madeleine Rowley
Madeleine Rowley is a former investigative reporter at The Free Press. She is a 2023-2024 Manhattan Institute Logos Fellow with previous bylines in The Free Press, City Journal, and Public. As a U.S. Army spouse for almost a decade, she's lived in six states and spent two years in Jerusalem, Israel. She currently resides on the East Coast with her husband and daughter.
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