by William F. Marshall
Biden’s EPA rushed billions out the door before Trump took over—now, experts say FinCEN could track the loot and bring the grifters to justice.
Recently some old-timey retired financial crime investigators suggested to me an approach DOGE might take toward recouping billions of dollars ripped off from American taxpayers by grifters in the last dying gasps of that horror show called the Biden administration. I think it bears relating here. Are you listening, Elon?
The suggestion was prompted by an article by Matt Taibi regarding a $20 billion slush fund discussed publicly on X by new Environmental Protection Agency director Lee Zeldin. As Taibi says, “It’s a true, crazy, obscene story.” Hat tip to the good people at Project Veritas as well, who first cracked this story in December 2024, when they caught an EPA special assistant, Zach Efron, who worked on “climate change things,” admitting on camera that he and his EPA colleagues were rushing to push billions of dollars out the EPA door before the Trump team took over. Efron actually said to the PV folks that their policy was, “Get the money out as fast as possible before they [Trump Administration] come in … it’s like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge.” He also said, “It was an insurance policy against Trump winning.”
(Just as an aside, remember when that washed-up cretinous FBI agent Peter Strzok told his lover and collaborator, Lisa Page, that they had an “insurance policy” against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump winning the presidency in 2016? What’s with anti-Trump government plotters wanting “insurance policies” involving Trump? But I digress.)
As Taibi relates the EPA scam, “Outgoing Biden staffers drafted a pair of agreements in August and September, clearing the way for the last-minute transfer of $20 billion out of government to an authorized financial agent, Citibank. Once money goes out the door, it’s considered expended, legally, achieving Efron’s stated end of making it harder for the new administration to ‘stop it all.’”
These financial agent agreements, like the one EPA used with Citibank, are ones the government has employed since the 1860s, Taibi notes, and allow government agencies to offload financial management of government funds to an outside financial entity, which are usually depository institutions. These arrangements also reduce government oversight of the funds. The $20 billion deal done by EPA was the first in its history. It was also unprecedented for a government agency to move such a large amount of money in the days before a new incoming administration took power. According to Mr. Zeldin, “It was purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.” The funds were derived from Biden’s hilariously named “Inflation Reduction Act.”
Taibi’s excellent piece detailing this gigantic EPA boondoggle is worth the time to read because it’s illustrative of how Deep State swamp creatures waste vast amounts of your money on things like “Clean Communities Investment Accelerators.” (I am not making this up.) We’ll just call this $20 billion scam the EPA Climate Caper, or EPACC, for short. Washington lives for acronyms.
EPACC involves billions going to “non-profits” through something called—wait for it—the Climate United Fund described as a “national coalition of non-profits” that had never received a government award before. Its crappy website literally went up in September 2024. Seriously. But just as Biden is about to get his butt hit by the closing Oval Office door, this “coalition” miraculously gets $7 billion. Only in Washington.
Taibi then goes on to describe how the EPACC scam was directly analogous to schemes used by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his cronies to siphon off billions of dollars (rubles?) from the Russian people in the early 90s and direct the funds to “authorized banks,” where the Russian government had little oversight of how the funds were spent. Imagine that: Biden officials learning from corrupt, 90s-era Russian organized criminals. The only difference is that the size of the Biden team’s graft dwarfed that of the Russians.
One can be sure that the EPACC is not a one-off Biden administration financial scandal.
Okay, so here is where my friends’ suggestions come in. They suggest that to identify the totality of such unusual transactions occurring in the dying days of the Biden administration, the current administration uses as its “chokepoint” a US Department of the Treasury agency called the Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN). FinCEN has broad powers to alert all US financial institutions to fact patterns identifying possible suspicious or unusual transactions via a FinCEN Advisory that would direct all U.S. banks and other financial institutions to identify and report, via Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) or otherwise, to its federal regulatory authorities, all transitions occurring during the period of November 5, 2024, to January 20, 2025 that:
- Originate from any federal agency (list them out);
- Exceed a designated amount (say, $10 million or whatever amount would reflect suspicious or unusual transactions) from November 5, 2024, to January 20, 2025;
- Are directed to a newly established account or series of newly established accounts (FinCEN can define what “newly” is);
- Or are directed to an existing account that had previously engaged in no or de minimis financial transactions;
- Where funds already have been disbursed from those accounts, report the destination accounts and recipients via SAR or report directly to the bank’s federal regulatory agency.
The banks should be directed to hold or return those funds to the originating agencies.
The US Government works with financial institutions all the time in the identification of potentially illicit transactions—for example, in thwarting drug trafficking money laundering or flagging Hunter Biden’s receipt of dubious funds from numerous bottom-feeding, corrupt foreign governments and questionable foreign actors in exchange for the Big Guy’s influence. At least $24 million was revealed from bank records as well as SARs to have wormed its way to numerous Biden family members through shell companies set up by Hunter Biden.
My friends also suggest that, in appropriate circumstances where the Advisory would not suffice, the Trump administration consider using Geographic Targeting Orders (GTOs), which our federal law enforcement agencies use to trace criminal proceeds. These instruments are law enforcement tools designed to require domestic financial institutions within certain geographic areas to report financial transactions over a certain financial threshold within a defined geographic area and limited time frame. They are used all the time against organized crime. Why not against organized crime within the government itself?
It’s time to bring justice to the grifters within the Deep State. Their graft makes that of traditional organized crime often pale in comparison. Let’s hope the Trump administration brings in experts like my friends to help DOGE tackle the worst characters populating our government.
***
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and
investigator in the government, private, and nonprofit sectors for 38
years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and has
been a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, Epoch Times, The
Federalist, American Greatness, and other publications. (The views
expressed are the author’s alone and not necessarily those of Judicial
Watch.)
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/20/suggestions-to-doge-to-claw-back-graft/
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