ICYMI: Donald Trump Lied About EPA Funding

Washington, D.C. — Following his address to Congress, The Washington Post fact-checked Trump’s misleading claims about the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) recipients. This comes on top of a Politifact debunking of EPA Administrator Zeldin’s claims, and the ongoing scandal of Zeldin’s attempt to weaponize the FBI against GGRF grantees who are trying to lower energy costs for working families. Here are the facts:

Washington Post: Trump’s false claim that Stacey Abrams headed a group that got $1.9 billion

“$1.9 billion to recently-created decarbonization of homes committee, headed up, and we know she’s involved, just at the last moment the money was passed over, by a woman named Stacey Abrams. Have you ever heard of her?”

— President Donald Trump, in an address to a joint session of Congress, March 4

We fact-checked 26 claims in Trump’s address on Tuesday night, but this one required more research to nail down. From Trump’s phrasing, it sounds like Stacey Abrams somehow got her hands on nearly $2 billion at the “last moment.” Abrams, of course, helped ensure Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia by registering more than 800,000 voters, many people of color, in the state, so he has a particular animus toward the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives. The president mentioned her as he read a long list of (mostly bogus) claims of government “scams.”

Is Trump’s claim true? No, not at all. A Biden green-energy program has been the subject of feverish reporting in the right-wing media, spurred by Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency. But Abrams’s role has been vastly overblown.

The Facts

Lee Zeldin, the EPA chief, is fond of quoting a video filmed by Project Veritas, a right-wing organization known for its undercover sting operations, in which an EPA staffer is quoted as saying Biden officials were “throwing gold bars on the edge” to “nonprofits, states, tribes” as an “insurance policy in case Trump won.”

Zeldin requested the EPA inspector general to investigate the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act that Congress approved in August 2022. The fund seeks to leverage public and private dollars to invest in clean-energy technologies such as solar panels and heat pumps, including through community lenders in low-income areas. The idea is that government funds would unleash private capital, especially in disadvantaged communities.

Meanwhile, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. resigned after she refused an order to freeze $20 billion from the fund held at Citibank, saying she lacked the legal authority to do so. Citibank ended up freezing the funds, and the FBI has launched a criminal probe and begun questioning EPA employees.

Yet for all the Sturm and Drang, the funding of this money was transparent and can be seen in documents available on the EPA website.

A slide presentation in July 2023 laid out the process for awarding the grants through a competitive process, including permitting a coalition application in which different organizations received subgrants. There were detailed timelines, notices and listening sessions to ensure a fair process. Applications were due in October 2023, and awards were announced in April 2024, well before Biden’s term ended. The funds were obligated in August, before the election, and one of the groups announced the first project, in ruby red Arkansas, in October.

The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund has three parts — $6 billion for community lenders to fund clean-energy projects, $7 billion for solar energy and $14 billion for national nonprofit financing entities.

This brings us to Abrams. Zeldin, in his announcement requesting the IG probe, also name-checked her: “For example, a Stacey Abrams linked organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023, was chosen to receive $2 billion — that’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

That’s highly misleading. He’s referring to Power Forward Communities, a consortium of five major players in housing, climate and community investment: United Way Worldwide, Habitat for Humanity International, Enterprise Community Partners, Rewiring America and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation. The group says it aims to lower housing costs and utility bills. The nonprofit entity filed a form with the IRS in 2023 showing $100 in revenue — but as we noted, the application process just started that year and grants were not awarded until 2024.

If Zeldin had bothered to read the Power Forward Communities grant application on the EPA website, he would have seen this section: “We bring proven reach, scale, and organizational experience across markets and supply chains, technical assistance, and lending. We have collectively deployed or invested over $100 billion in community-based housing, health, environmental, and economic development initiatives and created or preserved over 1.4 million affordable housing units.”

One hundred billion dollars is significantly more than $100.

Notice the phrase “Abrams linked organization”? That refers to the fact that in March 2023, Abrams became a senior counsel for Rewiring America, a consortium member that aims to convert homes from fossil fuels to electricity. But even that’s a stretch, as she was not involved with Power Forward’s EPA grant. Moreover, her contract with the group ended in December, according to Rewiring America spokesperson Kathleen Scatassa.

One of Abrams’s projects was recommending the Georgia community of De Soto for a project, under which Rewiring America will weatherize 116 homes in the community and provide either an HVAC heat pump, a heat pump water heater or an induction range, according to the Albany Herald.

Joshua Karp, a spokesperson for Abrams, said Trump’s statement was “absurd and false.” He said she did not have any role at Power Forward Communities beyond advising Rewiring America.

“Stacey Abrams has not received a penny of this EPA grant. It was never the plan for her to receive any money from this grant,” Tim Mayopoulos, Power Forward chief executive, told Politico last month. “Power Forward Communities has no relationship with Ms. Abrams, other than the fact that she’s one of the people who have advised one of our coalition members in the past.”

Meanwhile, Power Forward recently announced that it has committed $539 million in funding for home-efficiency upgrades and new construction, including more than $100 million in rural communities that probably supported Trump in the election.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Molly Vaseliou, an EPA spokesperson, responded with links to news stories and quotes by Zeldin. “The pass-through structure of these grants is a significant deviation from how EPA regularly conducts oversight of grantees,” she said. “EPA has no visibility nor role into understanding how these taxpayer dollars are being spent on the ground.”

The Pinocchio Test

Whether the funds were correctly distributed will be up to investigators, but Trump is wrong to claim that Abrams “headed” a committee that “at the last moment” received $1.9 billion. She does not head the consortium; she did not even head one member of the consortium. She was only an adviser. Moreover, the money was delivered nine months before President Joe Biden left office, not at the last moment.

Trump earns Four Pinocchios.