We are attempting to post only on "three-comma" stories and right now those seem to be coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency.*
From Elliott Management-backed (Paul Singer) Washington Free Beacon, February 20:
Jahi Wise joined George Soros's foundation shortly after disbursing the funds
The senior Biden administration official tasked with directing former President Joe Biden's $27 billion climate grant program oversaw a $5 billion grant from the program to his former employer, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Jahi Wise joined the Environmental Protection Agency in December 2022 as the founding director of the newly created Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, or GGRF, according to his LinkedIn profile. In April 2024, while Wise served in that role, the EPA announced that it would award GGRF grants totaling $20 billion to just eight nonprofits, including the Coalition for Green Capital, a Washington, D.C.-based group that received $5 billion as part of the announcement and where Wise previously worked as the director of policy. There is no indication that Wise recused himself from that process.
Wise departed the Coalition for Green Capital in January 2021 to join the White House Climate Policy Office as a special assistant to the president, a position he held until he joined the EPA less than two years later.
The EPA's $5 billion grant to the Coalition for Green Capital and Wise's involvement is also notable because former Biden administration official David Hayes serves on the group's board of directors. Hayes rejoined the group's board in October 2022 after having served as a special assistant to the president in the White House Climate Policy Office since January 2021, meaning he and Wise were close colleagues at the White House for roughly 21 months.
After joining the Coalition for Green Capital's board, Hayes said he was "hopeful that tens of billions of dollars of additional clean power investment, focused on low-income and disadvantaged communities, lies in the immediate future of CGC." The group simultaneously appointed Cecilia Martinez, who had served as a Biden White House environmental justice official, to its board, saying the pair would be involved in its forthcoming Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund application submission.
The revelation that Wise was involved in doling out a massive grant benefiting both his former employer and former White House colleague raises serious ethics and conflict-of-interest questions, experts told the Washington Free Beacon. Federal ethics laws place strict limits on officials' involvement in matters involving past employers.
It also provides fresh fodder for Trump administration officials who have set the GGRF program and its massive grants in their sights. On Tuesday, Denise Cheung, the top criminal prosecutor in the Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney’s Office, was forced to resign after she declined to open a grand jury investigation into the EPA's GGRF program funding, CNN first reported.
"The story of the Biden EPA’s gold bars never stops," EPA administrator Lee Zeldin told the Free Beacon. "The waste and abuse was so deeply interwoven in the last administration that not only did the leaders who oversaw this not bat an eye at billions of your taxpayer dollars going towards partisan pet projects, but serious conflicts of interest were ignored. That should have raised red flags."....
....MUCH MORE
Also at the Free Beacon, February 19:
DOGE discovered $2 billion in taxpayer funds set aside for a fledgling nonprofit linked to perennial Georgia Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.
The Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration awarded Power Forward Communities the grant in April 2024 as part of the agency's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program. Power Forward Communities received the green energy grant despite the fact that it was founded months earlier in late 2023 and never managed anywhere near the grant's dollar figure—it reported just $100 in total revenue during its first three months in operation, according to its latest tax filings....
As we said back in April 2023:
"EPA’s FY2024 Budget Request Emphasizes Continued Focus on Climate, Environmental Justice, and Infrastructure"
One of the hottest areas of funding this year and beyond will be for a Just Energy Transition.
We'll have more as the money tide comes rolling in but for now some background....
