At issue are $20 billion in grants under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a program established in Joe Biden’s signature 2022 climate law. The fund seeks to leverage public and private dollars to invest in clean-energy technologies such as solar panels, heat pumps and more, including through community lenders in low-income areas. The Trump-appointed EPA administrator has alleged publicly the money was awarded with little oversight and said the agency would try to claw back the money from Citibank, which was tasked with disbursing the funds.
The administration ran into its first roadblock in that effort last week, when a senior career prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. resigned rather than carry out the administration’s demand to freeze the funds over possible wire fraud. But the investigation did not end there, according to people familiar with the matter.
Interim U.S. attorney Ed Martin then personally submitted a seizure warrant application without any other prosecutors in his office that was rejected by a U.S. magistrate judge in D.C. who found that the request and accompanying FBI agent affidavit failed to establish a reasonable belief that a crime occurred, three of the people said.
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