Trump Attacks Habitat for Humanity

FBI Opens Criminal Investigations into Groups Advancing Renewable Energy

Day 101 — March 12, 2025

Citibank revealed that the Trump Administration (apparently the FBI, EPA and Treasury together) have opened criminal investigations into organizations that received federal EPA grants during the Biden Administration related to renewable energy.

The list of organizations swept up in investigation includes stalwarts such as Habitat for Humanity and the United Way, along with a wide variety of nonprofits, advancing energy, efficiency, and renewable energy in regions across the country, from Ohio to Appalachia to Colorado to Maine.

The letter sent to Citibank suggests that all of these organizations are being looked into for criminal violations (including conspiracy to defraud the United States), and therefore the Trump administration requested that Citibank freeze their funds.

Here are the opening and the closing sentences of the letter:

One observer of these charges responded as follows:

“An incoming administration not only cancels federal grants but declares recipients as criminals. All these grantees applied under government calls FOR ENVIRONMENTAL WORK, were reviewed and accepted. Trump wants to jail them.“

The Appalachian Community Capital Corporation, the Coalition for Green Capital, and the DC Green Bank are just some of the nonprofits being targeted.

“This is not fraud. This is targeted harassment,” @capitolhunters continued. “The idea of criminalizing community climate work wouldn’t have originated at the FBI—it likely comes from EPA director Lee Zeldin, who today cut all EPA’s environmental justice offices, which try to reduce pollution in poor and minority communities.”