Stacy Abrams Scandal?
Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2025 10:04 am
Without evidence, social media posts claim fraud in EPA grant to Stacey Abrams-linked group
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/gove ... r-AA1AmHga
Power Forward Communities, a coalition of housing and energy groups, received a $2 billion grant from the Inflation Reduction Act to make nationwide energy efficient home improvements.
Abrams was a senior counsel for Rewiring America, one of the five groups that made up the coalition, until the end of 2024.
Abrams did not work for Power Forward Communities, and there’s no evidence she received any money from the grant or engaged in any illegal activity.
Stacey Abrams, the two-time Democratic candidate for Georgia governor, did not steal $2 billion from a clean energy grant program, despite social media claims.
"Stacey Abrams stole $2 BILLION from taxpayers," one Feb. 19 Facebook post said.
Other social media posts circulated a similar claim, including the conservative X account Libs of TikTok, which accused the funding of being a "scam."
The Facebook post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)
The claim stems from a $2 billion Environmental Protection Agency grant that went to Power Forward Communities, a coalition of clean energy groups, including one in which Abrams previously was a senior counsel. The grant, which the EPA awarded under then-President Joe Biden, will fund energy efficient housing projects around the country. There’s no evidence Abrams directly received any of the grant money or engaged in illegal behavior.
Yet another outrageous lie from MAGA exposed, which will undoubtedly be repeated ad infinitum until millions of people believe it!Our ruling
A Facebook post said Stacey Abrams "stole $2 BILLION from taxpayers."
There’s no evidence for that.
Abrams was senior counsel to one of the five member organizations of a clean energy coalition that received $2 billion in funding from Biden’s EPA. Abrams was not paid by Power Forward Communities and did not receive any of the federal funds, its CEO said.
The EPA said it awarded the grant through a competitive review process. There’s no evidence the funding was fraudulent or that Abrams personally benefited from it. Power Forward Communities recently announced the first phase of projects funded by the grant.
We rate the claim False.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/gove ... r-AA1AmHga
We fact-checked 26 claims in Trump’s address on Tuesday night, but this one required more research to nail down. From Trump’s phrasing, it sounds as though Stacey Abrams somehow got her hands on nearly $2 billion at the “last moment.” Abrams, of course, helped ensure Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia by registering more than 800,000 voters, many people of color, in the state, so he has a particular animus toward the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives. The president mentioned her as he read a long list of (mostly bogus) claims of government “scams.”
Is Trump’s claim true? No, not at all. A Biden green-energy program has been the subject of feverish reporting in the right-wing media, spurred by Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency. But Abrams’s role has been vastly overblown.
Lee Zeldin, the EPA chief, is fond of quoting a video filmed by Project Veritas, a right-wing organization known for its undercover sting operations, in which an EPA staffer is quoted as saying Biden officials were “throwing gold bars off the edge” to “nonprofits, states, tribes” as an “insurance policy in case Trump won.”
Zeldin requested the EPA inspector general investigate the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act, approved by Congress in August 2022. The fund seeks to leverage public and private dollars to invest in clean-energy technologies such as solar panels and heat pumps, including through community lenders in low-income areas. The idea is that government funds would unleash private capital, especially in disadvantaged communities.
Meanwhile, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. resigned after she refused an order to freeze $20 billion from the fund held at Citibank, saying she lacked the legal authority to do so. Citibank ended up freezing the funds, and the FBI has launched a criminal probe and begun questioning EPA employees.
Yet for all the Sturm und Drang, the funding of this money was transparent and can be seen in documents available on the EPA website.
The Pinocchio Test
Whether the funds were correctly distributed will be up to investigators, but Trump is wrong to claim that Abrams “headed” a committee that “at the last moment” received $1.9 billion. She does not head the consortium; she did not even head one member of the consortium. She was only an adviser. Moreover, the money was delivered nine months before President Joe Biden left office, not at the last moment.
Trump earns Four Pinocchios.