West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey is leading a coalition of states fighting back against potential Biden-era fraud. Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency handed out $20 billion in grants as part of their “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund,” a program that had little to no oversight and awarded political allies huge sums of money.
The Trump administration’s EPA tried to cancel the grants due to new oversight findings but was blocked by a district court. West Virginia is leading a coalition of 24 states in an amicus brief supporting the Trump administration’s move.
“Taxpayers have a right to know who is receiving this money and how it is being spent,” Attorney General McCuskey said. “Billions of dollars went out the door to recipients who were unvetted, unqualified and unprepared – as part of a program created to line the pockets of Biden donors, not help Americans afford their electricity bills.”
The states argue that the EPA has both the right and the duty to cancel these grants after mismanagement was discovered. However, the program’s structure limits the EPA’s ability to oversee or terminate grants. The states propose this structure was intentionally designed to evade oversight and accountability.
The organizations that received grant funding were problematic on several levels. One EPA official awarded grant funding to his former employer. Another had only $100 in assets the year before being awarded $2 billion. Rather than being awarded competitively, grants allegedly went to political allies.
The states write in the brief, “When federal grant programs operate without meaningful oversight—as the House Oversight Committee found the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund did—States bear the consequences of projects that may be poorly conceived, executed, or managed. Taxpayers in amici States deserve to know that federal climate spending is subject to proper oversight and accountability, not rushed out the door as ‘gold bars off the Titanic.’”
The states are asking the en banc United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to vacate the district court’s preliminary injunction order. A panel of the D.C. Circuit earlier sided with the Trump administration and vacated the order.
Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming joined West Virginia in the brief.
Read the brief here.
###