The Common Thread Between Abrego Garcia and the EPA’s “Gold Bars”
The main connection between the Garcia case and the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund case would seem to be the Trump administration’s disregard for the rule of law. But they have a more substantive connection, as well. Consider the “evidence” Zeldin’s EPA has mustered against the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The EPA cited a video from Project Veritas—known for hidden-camera sting operations against liberals—that showed an EPA employee in the weeks after Trump’s election saying the agency was “trying to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and stop it all.… It truly feels like we’re on the Titanic, and we’re throwing, like, gold bars off the edge.” The employee wasn’t referring to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, as funds from that program had been allocated more than a month before Trump was elected, in accordance with federal statute. Nevertheless, Zeldin and Trump-aligned media used the clip as an opportunity to spread the idea that the Biden administration was distributing “gold bars” to a handful of shady nonprofits.
Zeldin demanded that Citibank “must immediately return all of the gold bars,” and official EPA communications have similarly raised the specter of some physical cache of actual gold bars. No such thing exists, of course. “Here we are, weeks in, and you’re still unable to proffer me any evidence with regard to malfeasance,” Chutkan told Justice Department lawyers during one hearing.
It isn’t just the funds that the administration is targeting, though. The FBI is currently pursuing a criminal investigation into the grant program after two separate U.S. attorneys were unable to obtain warrants to freeze the funds. The Bureau instructed Citibank to freeze Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund recipients’ accounts, alleging they were involved in “possible criminal violations,” including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”