The action comes weeks after the EPA froze the grants, which EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has characterized as a “gold bar” scheme marred by conflicts of interest and potential fraud.
“Twenty billion of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution, in a deliberate effort to limit government oversight — doling out your money through just eight pass-through, politically connected, unqualified and in some cases brand-new" nonprofit organizations, Zeldin said in a video shared Tuesday night.
The grants “raise significant concerns and pose unacceptable risk,'' Zeldin added. “The only way we can reduce waste, increase oversight and meet the intent of the law as it was written is by terminating these grants."
Zeldin cited a conservative journalist’s undercover video made late last year that showed a former EPA employee saying the agency was throwing “gold bars off the Titanic” — presumably a reference to spending before the start of Trump’s second term.
The terminations come as three of the nonprofit groups that received grants have filed lawsuits challenging the funding freeze ordered by the EPA.
While favored by congressional Democrats, the green bank drew immediate criticism from Republicans, who routinely denounced it as an unaccountable “slush fund.″
