Remember that shocking case of the EPA freezing funds in an NGO’s private bank account because the administrator saw a Project Veritas video? Yeah, well:
An appeals court on Tuesday ruled against several nonprofit groups that had $16 billion in climate grants frozen this year by the Trump administration.
In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that it did not have jurisdiction in the case and that the Trump administration acted legally in its attempts to claw back the funds, dashing the environmental groups’ hopes of immediately accessing money they were awarded more than a year ago.
“While some grantees may be forced to shutter their operations during the litigation, their harms do not outweigh the interests of the government and the public in the proper stewardship of billions of taxpayer dollars,” the court wrote in the majority opinion.
There is no evidence of fraud. It’s more bullshit from the Trump administration. The money had been allocated in the previous administration and was actually disbursed. Trump’s EPA lackey Lee Zeldin had the bank freeze the funds.
Not long after entering office, E.P.A. administrator Lee Zeldin began calling for the return of the money, suggesting, without providing evidence, that the grants were vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse.
Mr. Zeldin cited a hidden-camera video made public by the right-wing group Project Veritas in which a Biden-era E.P.A. staff member compared the outgoing administration’s efforts to allocate money in its final months to tossing gold bars off the Titanic. In public comments, Mr. Zeldin began referring to the grants as “gold bars.”
It’s another form of rescission, basically:
In court, the E.P.A. has offered a different legal argument. It has said it can cancel the grants and reclaim the funding because its priorities have changed.
“It’s money that’s gone all the way through the fiscal process and is being pulled back, and that’s really not something administrations have done in the past,” said David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University.
No they haven’t. What a pandora’s box they’ve opened too. Normally, government doesn’t just get to “reclaim” money from contractors because a new administration has taken office. Freezing their accounts because of “potential fraud and abuse” is also unprecedented. If they can do that, no contracts are secure.
The two judges who made up the majority vote, Neomi Rao and Gregory Katsas, both worked in the first Trump administration and were appointed to the bench by President Trump.
“It’s fantastic to see reason prevail in the court system,” Brigit Hirsch, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, said. “The gold bar recipients were wrong about jurisdiction all along and wrong to act so entitled to these precious public funds that belong to hardworking American taxpayers.”
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Nina Pillard, an Obama appointee, strongly objected to the decision. “The majority allows the government to seize plaintiffs’ money based on spurious and pretextual allegations and to permanently gut implementation of major congressional legislation.”
Pillard is right. That’s the whole idea.
If we survive and the Democrats ever take office, I will enjoy watching these hypocrites dance on the head of a pin trying to explain why it was ok for Trump but not for any Democrat to act like a king. I’m sure they’ll find a way. Intellectually consistency has been retired as a concept in right wing legal circles.