As RedState reported, a non-profit headed by Stacey Abrams received taxpayer cash through a $2 billion government grant doled out by the Biden administration. The money was given to “Power Forward Communities,” and the sketchiness of the entire affair only gets worse as you dig deeper.
SEE: Stacey Abrams Linked to $2 Billion Environmental Group Grant Rolled Up By DOGE
The paper trail started with a slush fund given to the Environmental Protection Agency. Lee Zeldin, who now heads that agency under the Trump administration, found that the money had been “parked” with outside non-profits in an attempt to get the money out the door before Biden left office.
Elon Musk’s DOGE group recovered $2 billion from a Georgia non-profit coalition that included one entity headed by Stacey Abrams, the perennial losing candidate for something. The grant was part of a $27 billion giveaway through Biden’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. This fund achieved some notoriety in recent days when EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the DOGE team had discovered $20 billion “parked” in various non-profits.
One of those non-profits was “Power Forward Communities.” Shockingly, all it took to get $2 billion in taxpayer money was to set up an organization out of thin air, take in just $100 in receipts, and profit.
The organization was set up expressly to apply for the GGRF grant. It had only received $100 in funding during the 2023 tax year. Yet somehow, it managed to retain the services of a major law firm to file its return.
The hook to Abrams is her role with Rewiring America, one of the Power Forward Communities coalition partners.
Keep in mind that the last non-profit Abrams was involved in had to pay a $300,000 fine to the State of Georgia for over a dozen campaign finance law violations related to her failed 2018 gubernatorial run. Since she faced no real punishment, though, is it any wonder she’d go right back to the NGO well? Especially with the Biden administration ready to hand out cash like it grew on trees?
Zeldin described it as a “gold bars” scheme in his statement slamming Abrams and Biden for what he called “self-dealing and conflicts of interest.”
“Stacey Abrams linked Power Forward Communities received $2 billion in tax dollars in 2024 after reporting just $100 in revenue the year before. They were so unqualified that the grant agreement required the NGO to complete ‘How to Develop a Budget’ training within 90 days,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in comment provided to Fox News Digital on Sunday.
“$2 billion in hard earned tax dollars should not have been doled out to this organization for many reasons, especially if they don’t even know how to put together a budget. The Biden EPA ‘gold bars’ scheme is riddled with self-dealing and conflicts of interest, unnecessary middlemen, unqualified recipients, and massively reduced government oversight. The funds are currently frozen, and the DOJ and FBI are investigating.”
On Friday, Abrams went on MSNBC (because where else?) to defend herself. In a defiant rebuttal, she claimed she was actually just helping to lower the electric bills for poor people.
“Based on that program, a coalition of organizations – famous organizations – came together and said to the EPA, ‘If we can do this here, we can do this for millions more Americans. Let us invest the money of America in lowering the cost for Americans.’ And the EPA said, ‘OK, great, go for it.’ And they then granted those dollars to this coalition of organizations who came together, bringing 250 years and $100 billion worth of experience to doing this project,” she said.
The $2 billion was used for the “decarbonization of homes” in low-income communities and paid for new household appliances, such as water heaters, induction stoves, solar panels, EV chargers, and weatherization, according to an April 2024 press release from Power Forward Communities.
While she cites “250 years” of experience among the organizations involved, “Power Forward Communities” had no experience. Why was such a middleman even necessary? And why would that middleman be more qualified to appropriate this money than just giving it directly to supposedly qualified organizations? The sleight of hand here is claiming that Abrams wasn’t paid by “Power Forward Communities.” Yet, she was paid by “Rewiring America,” which received money through the pass-through of “Power Forward Communities.” Are you starting to see how none of this makes much sense? If anything, I have even more questions now.
The press will no doubt “fact-check” this topic and claim everything was on the up-and-up while we have essentially no data to show what was accomplished, where the money was spent, how much of this specific grant was blown on salaries, and who exactly was “helped” in all this. We are just supposed to take Abrams’ word for it.
Here’s the thing, though, and what we will be ignored by the press as they try to defend this. A corrupt, failed politician like Abrams being able to profit repeatedly from the NGO circuit is a scandal in and of itself. The federal government should not be giving money to shady groups that benefit the political allies of the current administration. Even if some stoves were bought for poor people, the fact that taxpayer money is trickling down to some of the worst political actors in the country is an issue in and of itself. That one of them just so happened to be Stacey Abrams is not a coincidence, in my view.
