A right-wing conspiracy theory website is at the heart of the latest Justice Department resignation in protest of the Trump administration’s interference at the DOJ.
In her Tuesday resignation letter to acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, federal prosecutor Denise Cheung, who was in charge of the criminal division in the Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, cited her refusal to open a grand jury investigation into Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency grants and to freeze assets of the grant initiative.
Cheung noted in her resignation letter that there’s simply not enough evidence to support these actions — actions that Martin, a Trump ally, directed her to take. The only evidence driving the Trump administration push for an investigation and potential asset freeze is a 5-minute video clip from the known misinformation purveyor Project Veritas, which purports to show a former EPA employee speaking about distributing climate specific funding to non-profit organizations before the start of Trump’s presidency.
The issue at hand centers on EPA administrator Lee Zeldin’s push to rescind $20 billion in grants that were already allocated for climate projects by the Biden administration, according to reports from the Washington Post and CNN. In a video posted on X last week, Zeldin claimed that the grant money, which he referred to as being part of a “scheme,” had been improperly dolled out by the Biden administration.
In his post on X, Zeldin references what he calls an “extremely disturbing video” of a former Biden-era EPA employee talking about “tossing gold bars off the Titanic.”
The “disturbing” video in question is a Project Veritas clip that shows a former Biden-era EPA employee speaking about distributing funding to “nonprofits, states, tribes” ahead of Trump’s presidency. It’s the only supposed proof that Zeldin has put forward as justification for his attempts to claw back the money and contracts tied to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
Zeldin also mentioned in his announcement on X that he “found” $20 billion worth of funding in an “outside financial institution”, but, later, in the same clip also says “there is zero reason to suspect any wrongdoing by the bank.”
“It’s ridiculous that the head of the EPA is justifying an illegal funding blockade with a selectively edited video from a far-right, shady organization known for spreading misinformation to serve Republican political narratives,” Seth Nelson, Evergreen Action Deputy Communications Director, told TPM.
The reliance on this video and the lack of supporting evidence for wrongdoing is in large part the reason why Cheung refused to support a grand jury investigation into the Biden administration’s EPA grants.
“I was asked to review documentation supplied by the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) to open a criminal investigation into whether a contract had been unlawfully awarded by an executive agency before the change in Administration and to issue grand jury subpoenas pursuant to this investigation,” she wrote in her Tuesday resignation letter.
Cheung goes on to explain in her letter that she had conferred with others in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, “all of whom have substantial white collar criminal prosecution experience,” to determine whether or not there was enough evidence to open a grand jury investigation. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove’s office insisted that the Project Veritas clip provided enough evidence to justify an investigation, according to CNN. But Cheung determined that there was not.
Cheung noted that she then “took point” on a process to request that “the bank freeze assets” of the EPA funding. Coordinating with an FBI official in the Washington field office, Cheung drafted a letter to the bank recommending an asset freeze.
Martin, however, told Cheung to use more explicit language in her draft letter that said “the government has probable cause to believe that the funds on deposit in the above-referenced account(s) at [named bank] are subject to seizure and forfeiture to the United States based upon violations, ” Cheung said in her letter.
Cheung then told Martin that there is insufficient evidence to use this type of language.
“When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed that there was sufficient evidence,” she continued. “As I shared with you, at this juncture, based upon the evidence I have reviewed, I still do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to issue the letter you described, including sufficient evidence to tell the bank that there is probable cause to seize the particular accounts identified.”
