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Fox News anchor John Roberts absurdly declared on Tuesday that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin had recently discovered “fraud” within the EPA when he found “$20 billion sitting in a parked car outside of a financial institution.”
Needless to say, Zeldin did not come across piles of cash sitting in a vehicle outside of a bank, as it appears that Roberts misinterpreted a report about the EPA chief attempting to rescind grants awarded by the Biden administration aimed at clean-energy projects.
Amid the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle federal government agencies and slash spending through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Zeldin announced last week that he had “found” $20 billion of EPA funds that had been “parked” in an “outside financial institution.”
While Zeldin groused that the funds were part of a “scheme” to rush government grants to “far-left activist groups,” likening the effort to “tossing gold bars off the Titanic,” it appears that the EPA head is actually revoking money that Congress approved years ago. At the same time, Zeldin has admitted that there is “zero reason to suspect any wrongdoing by the bank” but that he wants the money back in the EPA’s hands for oversight purposes.
“The program, approved under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, is formally known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, but is more commonly called the green bank,” the Associated Press reported. “Two initiatives, worth $14 billion and $6 billion respectively, are intended to offer competitive grants to nonprofits, community development banks and other groups for projects with a focus on disadvantaged communities.”
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The GOP-controlled House attempted to repeal the “green bank” last year, claiming it was a “slush fund” without proper accountability, but the Democratic-controlled Senate blocked it.
Setting up his interview with Zeldin on Tuesday afternoon, Roberts said that “as DOGE comes after federal agencies in an attempt to save taxpayers money,” the EPA had “discovered its own fraud.” While the control room aired a headline from a Fox News digital story on the grant money Zeldin was trying to claw back, Roberts offered up a very different interpretation.
“$20 billion sitting in a parked car outside a financial institution,” the veteran anchor breathlessly exclaimed. “EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has demanded those funds be returned so they don’t go to waste.”
After welcoming Zeldin to the broadcast, Roberts quipped that the two men had “rode up the elevator today” in the Fox News location, calling it a “record” that they shared an elevator “twice in one day.” He then pivoted back to the already-appropriated EPA funds that Zeldin was trying to recover, making it known that the two men had spoken about the issue earlier in the day.
“So tell us about this $20 billion you found stashed away, and as we were chatting on the elevator, you said it was done in such a way that made oversight nearly impossible,” Roberts added.
Zeldin, however, did not address the Fox News host’s claims that the EPA had literally found billions of dollars in cash “sitting in a parked car.” Instead, the EPA chief complained about how the Biden administration attempted to “rush” through the agreements beginning in September of last year, claiming that “$20 billion going out the door up front should be a big red flag.” He also said that because the funds were no longer being held by the EPA, it had drastically reduced “accountability and oversight” by the agency.
“I want the EPA to be in possession of the funding and have control and oversight of the funding. But that was relinquished,” he continued. “So the whole scheme was something that was extremely irresponsible before you even get started on analyzing each individual recipient.”
Meanwhile, it would seem that Roberts – or one of the show’s producers – may have misread the network’s own story on the “green bank” funds that Zeldin now wants back.
“‘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 in a video posted to X, citing another video from December. ‘The ‘gold bars’ were tax dollars and ‘tossing them off the Titanic’ meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it,’” the article notes.
“Zeldin said the EPA has plans to recover the ‘gold bars’ that were found ‘parked at an outside financial institution,’ which he does not mention by name,” the Fox News story adds.
The Independent has reached out to Fox News for comment.
This isn’t the first time that Roberts has been left with some egg on his face over his on-air remarks. In June 2023, he apologized on air for mocking former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over his weight, saying he “immediately realized” it was “hurtful.” Two years earlier, Roberts also walked back his and the network’s reporting that Biden was planning to limit Americans’ red meat consumption to combat climate change.
