EPA Official Allocates $5 Billion to Former Employer, Then Joins Soros Foundation

The senior Biden administration official tasked with directing former President Joe Biden’s $27 billion climate grant program oversaw a $5 billion grant from the program to his former employer, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Jahi Wise joined the Environmental Protection Agency in December 2022 as the founding director of the newly created Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, or GGRF, according to his LinkedIn profile. In April 2024, while Wise served in that role, the EPA announced that it would award GGRF grants totaling $20 billion to just eight nonprofits, including the Coalition for Green Capital, a Washington, D.C.-based group that received $5 billion as part of the announcement and where Wise previously worked as the director of policy. There is no indication that Wise recused himself from that process.

Wise departed the Coalition for Green Capital in January 2021 to join the White House ClimatePolicy Office as a special assistant to the president, a position he held until he joined the EPA less than two years later.

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“For years, Protect the Public’s Trust and others have been warning of the GGRF’s potential for abuse, to say nothing of the greater IRA,” said Michael Chamberlain, the director of watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust. “Between David Hayes, who sandwiched stints at CGC with one at the White House in which he helped create IRA climate programs, presumably including GGRF, and Jahi Wise, CGC couldn’t have been better positioned for the GGRF windfall.”

“The way they and others pin-balled around the Biden administration’s ‘green’ offices and then shot back out to the climate industry should be set to The Benny Hill Show theme,” Chamberlain added. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing funny about the unheard-of billions in taxpayer dollars they helped transform into an activist slush fund. Administrator Zeldin has his work cut out for him.”

Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director of ethics watchdog Americans for Public Trust, echoed Chamberlain and said Zeldin should continue to investigate GGRF grants issued during the Biden administration under Wise’s leadership.

“The founding director of the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund awarding $5 billion to his former employer is the sort of self-dealing revolving door that has become a hallmark of green energy handouts,” Sutherland told the Free Beacon. “Secretary Zeldin is right to set his sights on the Coalition for Green Capital as he seeks to reclaim taxpayer money.”

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Overall, the GGRF is the single largest non-tax investment within the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The program was created by Democrats to act as a green bank, directing billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to intermediaries, which then finance green energy and environmental justice projects across the United States.

The GGRF was immediately criticized by Republican lawmakers and energy experts after it was established, with experts warning that its size and scope could lead to significant government waste and abuse. They also argued that, while massive, the program would have little impact on climatechange.

Zycher authored a report in December 2022 that concluded the “obvious objective” of the GGRF program is “the provision of large subsidies to favored interest groups.”