Joe Biden, Lee Zeldin, CitiBank
The Trump administration has ordered Citibank to freeze a $20 billion fund for pop-up climate groups provided by then-lame-duck President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because it is tied up in a criminal investigation, according to a Wednesday court filing.
An attorney for Citibank revealed in a federal court motion that the financial institution had “been instructed by EPA and the Department of Treasury to pause all further disbursements” from a Biden-era Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
The Trump administration ordered Citibank to freeze a $20 billion slush fund for pop-up climate groups Wednesday. REUTERS
The billions of dollars’ worth of grants went out the door in the final week of the 46th president’s term — but have been parked at the bank since President Trump assumed office on Jan. 20.
Citibank counsel K. Winn Allen wrote that feds in recent weeks have revealed the greenhouse fund was “subject to an ongoing criminal investigation” and they had been asked by the FBI to freeze the disbursement for at least 30 days due to “credible information” about “possible criminal violations.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has called for the funding to be clawed back, and the agency’s inspector general has launched an investigation.
In a Tuesday video announcement, Zeldin also said that the scheme — which was described by a Biden administration official caught on a hidden video as “throwing gold bars off the edge” of the Titanic — intended to move the funds through eight “pass-through, politically connected, unqualified and in some cases brand-new NGOs.”
The fund was set up by President Joe Biden’s EPA, according to a filing. Getty Images
The money was authorized for the fledgling non-governmental organizations under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in 2022, which was crammed with climate-friendly provisions.
In total, the legislation outlined $27 billion in clean energy investments through grants, loans and other financial assistance to transition toward net-zero carbon emission technologies.
Tens of millions of dollars of disbursements have already trickled out to some of the groups — including to the Maryland-based Climate United Fund, which Citibank noted in its filing before the DC US District Court.
Climate United Fund asked the court for a temporary restraining order in a lawsuit filed Saturday against Citibank, meant to halt the Trump administration’s move to recoup the funding.
Other recipients of the green “gold bars” scheme, as Zeldin called it, include Power Forward Communities Inc., started by former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, which got $2 billion in grants.
“Citibank has … only done its best to serve its customers while following instructions from the government of the United States, to whom Citibank owes a duty of loyalty and at whose direction Citibank is contractually obligated to act,” wrote Allen in Wednesday’s motion.
Zeldin added in an X post after the filing: “Today is going to be the most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history. Stay tuned and buckle up!”
