Citibank collaborating with Trump administration’s attempt to use knowingly baseless criminal charges to illegally claw back already disbursed funds
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It’s always instructive who is willing to go along with the flagrantly illegal actions of the Trump administration’s political employees and who isn’t:
FBI agents this week questioned Environmental Protection Agency employees regarding a Biden administration grant program for climate and clean-energy projects, escalating a criminal probe that already caused one veteran prosecutor to resign, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The move came after the Justice Department in recent weeks took unusual steps to advance the investigation, having a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney submit a warrant request when career prosecutors were unwilling and seeking prosecutors in other offices who would agree to participate in the case, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal deliberations about an ongoing criminal investigation.
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 that 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.
Meanwhile, acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove’s office approached at least one other U.S. attorney’s office in the southeastern United States to launch a grand jury investigation and seek a court-ordered bank freeze, but prosecutors in the office again refused the warrant request,two of the people said. It is not clear if more evidence has since been obtained or if a warrant was granted elsewhere. But at least three groups that had been awarded money said their accounts have been frozen, and the bankwon’t tell them why.
Martin and Bove are being lawless thugs because that’s the job they were hired to do. Citibank collaborating with them as prosecutors and magistrates actually try to uphold the law is incredibly reprehensible behavior.