EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin vowed in a video on X to retrieve funding that was allegedly shoveled out the door in the waning days of the Biden administration. 

Project Veritas released an undercover video in December showing Brent Efron, special adviser for implementation at the Environmental Protection Agency, discussing an effort at the agency to “get as much money out as fast as possible” before there’s a change in administration. Efron said in the video that the EPA was “tossing gold bars off the Titanic.” 

Zeldin referred to Efron as a “Biden EPA political appointee” and said his team at the agency located the “gold bars.” Roughly $20 billion, Zeldin said, was parked in an outside financial institution. He said this tactic was the first of its kind in EPA history and was designed to obligate all the money, rush it out the door, and do so with “reduced oversight.” 

 Eighth entities were awarded the funding, and these recipients were going to pass the funding to NGOs and other grantees. One entity, Zeldin said, was the Climate United Fund.

Zeldin said there’s no reason to believe the outside bank had done any wrongdoing, but he would request the bank terminate the financial agreement it had with the federal government and return the funding. 

He would also be reviewing who these organizations that received funding are passing the grants to, and who was receiving them. He would also be referring the matter to the Office of the Inspector General and the Department of Justice.