The Trump administration had been cautioned that they were treading shaky legal ground as they plotted to block eight nonprofits from using $20 billion in Biden-era climate grants that had already been disbursed, according to a new report in Politico.
But Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin still plowed forward with the plan that terminated the grants completely. His move came less than 48 hours after an EPA lawyer warned in a series of emails last month that the action could leave the Trump administration on the hook for billions in damages if a court ultimately deems the move unlawful, Politico reported.
The administration’s strategy “is believed to have significant legal vulnerabilities,” veteran EPA career attorney Jim Payne wrote to staff and political appointees at the agency, Treasury Department and Justice Department last month, according to internal government emails obtained by Politico.
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“In the same email chain, government lawyers acknowledged that they did not know whether criminal and civil investigations launched by the Trump administration would uncover evidence of the waste, fraud or conflicts of interest that Zeldin has publicly alleged in his frequent attacks on the climate grants,” the publication stated. “Their ‘short-term objective’ was to block the money while those probes play out, a senior Justice Department attorney wrote in one email.”
The emails, which have until now been unreleased, “offer a rare glimpse at the administration’s internal qualms as EPA, DOJ and Treasury wage one of the most aggressive battles in President Donald Trump’s campaign to throttle his predecessor’s clean energy and climate agenda,” Politico added.
“To me, this is a signal that they think this is probably a loser,” according to Gary Jonesi, who retired earlier this year after a 39-year enforcement career at the EPA under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
The report concluded that the fight over the $20 billion stands out because the Trump administration is seeking to pull back "money that is already out the door — cash that President Joe Biden’s agencies had awarded, and placed in accounts for the recipients at Citibank, before Trump took office."