West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey
CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey is leading a coalition of states fighting back against what it says is potential grant fraud.
Under President Joe Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency handed out $20 billion in grants as part of its Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a program McCuskey says had little to no oversight and awarded political allies huge sums of money.
The Trump administration’s EPA tried to cancel the grants following new oversight findings but was blocked by a district court.
McCuskey now is leading a conservative coalition of 24 states in an amicus brief supporting the Trump administration’s move in filing a January 16 amicus brief in the case styled Climate United Fund et al. v. Citibank N.A. et al.
“Taxpayers have a right to know who is receiving this money and how it is being spent,” McCuskey said. “Billions of dollars went out the door to recipients who were unvetted, unqualified and unprepared – as part of a program created to line the pockets of Biden donors, not help Americans afford their electricity bills.”
The states say the EPA has both the right and the duty to cancel these grants after mismanagement was discovered. However, the states say the program’s structure limits the EPA’s ability to oversee or terminate grants. The states propose this structure was intentionally designed to evade oversight and accountability.
The organizations that received grant funding were problematic on several levels, according to the coalition.
One EPA official awarded grant funding to his former employer. Another had only $100 in assets the year before being awarded $2 billion. The coalition says that rather than being awarded competitively, grants allegedly went to political allies.
“When federal grant programs operate without meaningful oversight — as the House Oversight Committee found the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund did — states bear the consequences of projects that may be poorly conceived, executed, or managed,” the states’ amicus brief states. “Taxpayers in amici states deserve to know that federal climate spending is subject to proper oversight and accountability, not rushed out the door as ‘gold bars off the Titanic.’”
The states are asking the en banc United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to vacate the district court’s preliminary injunction order. A panel of the D.C. Circuit earlier sided with the Trump administration and vacated the order.
Joining McCuskey in the brief are the AGs from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
