Lee Zeldin Wants His Gold Bars Back

Will he be able to claw them back?

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said this week he plans to work with the Department of Justice and the Inspector General’s Office to claw back $20 billion in intermittent energy subsidies shoved out the door in the final weeks of the Biden Administration. That was a period time at EPA that one mid-level management official caught on hidden camera described as the equivalent to gold bars being tossed from the Titanic.

Zeldin referred to that video in a statement he posted on X announcing his attempt to return some of that gold to the U.S. Treasury. “An extremely disturbing video circulated two months ago featuring a Biden -EPA political appointee talking about how they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic, rushing to get billions of your tax dollars out the door before Inauguration Day,” Zeldin said, adding, “The gold bars were tax dollars, and tossing them off the Titanic meant the Biden Administration knew they were wasting it.”

In Zeldin’s view, a big chunk of that waste is represented by a transfer of $20 billion to an account set up at CitiBank, from which huge grants were then transferred to 8 entities which will in turn dole out awards to an array of additional non-profits. If it all seems to you to be similar to the kinds of opaque dark money schemes involving NGOs organized as 501(c)(3) “non-profit” groups exposed through DOGE’s review of the USAID budget, you are not alone.