A federal judge focused in a hearing Wednesday on EPA’s choice to cut procedural corners and brandish claims about fraud and abuse in its effort to recover billions of dollars in Inflation Reduction Act climate grants.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is considering the recipents’ challenge of EPA’s abrupt termination of $14 billion in green bank awards, questioned the Trump administration lawyer about the agency’s actions leading up to the grant cancellations, including statements by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin alleging grantee misconduct and a directive to Citibank, which is administering the grants, to freeze accounts with no notice to recipients.
Chutkan asked the Department of Justice’s Marc Sacks whether he believed EPA had complied with the Administrative Procedures Act and its own grant regulations in freezing and then terminating the awards, which were intended to capitalize national finance programs to promote renewable energy and zero-carbon transportation and housing.
She noted the plaintiffs said they had received no advance notice from EPA before their accounts at Citibank were frozen in mid-February. When the cash became inaccessible and the grant recipients sued for its release, EPA requested that the initial court hearing to be delayed by one day and then issued letters terminating the grants that evening.
