Here is a dishonest lawyer. She was hired to prosecute corruption and to find corruption. But, she refuses to participate in gathering the evidence of the corruption of the Biden Administration, the cabal of the DOJ and FBI in promoting hate and lawfare, while protecting the crooks in the Biden Administration.
“A top federal prosecutor in Washington resigned Tuesday after refusing an order from Justice Department leaders to direct a bank to freeze accounts holding $20 billion in climate change money allocated by former President Joe Biden’s climate spending law.
Denise Cheung, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, said in a letter that Trump administration officials, seeking to prevent the money from being spent, had pressured her to launch a criminal investigation without sufficient evidence. The Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency placed the money at Citibank last year to fund efforts by nonprofit green groups to reduce climate pollution.”
Obviously Cheung needs to be investigated because maybe she was part of the Biden fraud on the American people?
Senior prosecutor in Washington quits, citing pressure to probe Biden-era climate funds
Denise Cheung’s departure comes as Trump seeks to elevate the office’s temporary leader, interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, to the post permanently.
By Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein, Alex Guillén and Jean Chemnick, Politico, 2/18/25 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/18/denise-cheung-us-attorneys-office-washington-020363
A top federal prosecutor in Washington resigned Tuesday after refusing an order from Justice Department leaders to direct a bank to freeze accounts holding $20 billion in climate change money allocated by former President Joe Biden’s climate spending law.
Denise Cheung, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, said in a letter that Trump administration officials, seeking to prevent the money from being spent, had pressured her to launch a criminal investigation without sufficient evidence. The Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency placed the money at Citibank last year to fund efforts by nonprofit green groups to reduce climate pollution.
Cheung, who has worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office since 2000, said interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin had demanded her resignation after she refused to order the bank to “freeze” the funds while asserting that a criminal probe was underway. That step, she said, was permitted only if prosecutors had “probable cause” to believe a crime was committed.
“When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed that there was sufficient evidence,” Cheung wrote in a three-page letter to Martin dated Tuesday, obtained by POLITICO. “I still do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to issue the letter you described.”
Cheung’s letter omits the name of the agency and bank involved, but a Justice Department official granted anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly confirmed that the dispute involved a $20 billion EPA grant program related to climate change. That makes Tuesday’s resignation one of the most dramatic outcomes yet from President Donald Trump’s long-promised effort to cancel Biden’s hundreds of billions of dollars in climate and clean energy spending.
A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement that Cheung’s refusal was an act of defiance that shouldn’t be celebrated.
“Refusing a basic request to pause an investigation so officials can examine the potential waste of government funds is not an act of heroism — just a failure to follow chain of command,” the statement said.
Cheung’s resignation is the latest departure at DOJ over allegations that leaders have attempted to politicize criminal proceedings in ways that defy their oaths as prosecutors. It follows similar departures from DOJ’s Public Integrity Section and the Manhattan federal prosecutors’ office after DOJ leaders demanded the dismissal of corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
And Cheung’s departure comes amid broader turmoil at the Justice Department, including the summary termination of prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases and questions about DOJ leaders’ intention for thousands of FBI agents and employees who worked on those cases.
The Trump administration has sought to halt spending from Democrats’ signature climate law, including its marquee grant program aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions, which the administration has derided as a slush fund for liberal advocacy groups.
Cheung described an escalating crisis for her office after she was asked to review documentation supplied by the office of the Justice Department’s acting No. 2 official, Emil Bove. Bove’s office, Cheung wrote in her letter, wanted “to open a criminal investigation into whether a contract had been unlawfully awarded by an executive agency before the change in Administration and to issue grand jury subpoenas pursuant to this investigation.”
“I was told that there was time sensitivity and action had to be taken that day because there was concern that contract awardees could continue to draw down on accounts handled by the bank handling the disbursements,” Cheung wrote.
Cheung said she conferred with colleagues, “all of whom have substantial white collar criminal prosecution experience,” and concluded that the documents “on their face” fell short of justifying a criminal probe.
Though the FBI, working with Cheung, ultimately issued a letter to the bank “recommending” a freeze of the contract funds, Cheung indicated that Martin called her and expressed “dissatisfaction” that the letter merely recommended a freeze, rather than ordering it.
“You also directed that a second letter be immediately issued to the bank under your and my name ordering the bank not to release any funds in the subject accounts pursuant to a criminal investigation,” Cheung wrote to Martin. That demand, she said, triggered her resignation.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told reporters on the sidelines of an event Tuesday that he had spent the weekend focused on the $20 billion program, known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and set up by the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022.
That money was transferred to Citibank last year by the Biden administration to capitalize green lending programs that would be administered by eight nonprofits and nonprofit coalitions. The funds are in accounts under the names of the awardees, who have used them to make investments and enter into contracts with partners to deploy renewable energy, upgrade buildings and build out electric vehicle charging infrastructure, among other things.
“I spent my weekend reviewing the financial agent agreement between Treasury and the bank on the $20 billion that were sent, reading the account control agreement, the amended account control agreement, the legal review and the more I read, the more I was growing increasingly concerned over how it was purposefully put into writing that the EPA would tie its hands behind its back, and I don’t believe that that is what the American taxpayer does or should expect from government,” Zeldin said.
Zeldin referred questions about potential criminal charges relating to the program to DOJ.
Last week, Zeldin called for the arrangement to be “instantly terminated” and said he would demand Citibank return the money.
Zeldin also cited an undercover video released in December in which a person identified as an EPA adviser likened the Biden administration’s effort to spend its climate money before Trump took office to “throwing gold bars” off the Titanic. Cheung’s letter also appears to mention the video, which had been shot by a conservative group.
Although EPA did race to issue IRA funds in the final days of the Biden administration, this $20 billion in grants was finalized well before Trump took power, and in fact even before the November election. The law required EPA to obligate the funds by Sept. 30, 2024, which the agency did. Vice President Kamala Harris and then-EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced the recipients of the money at an event in North Carolina last April.
Citibank declined to comment on Tuesday about whether it would comply with the FBI’s recommendation for “a thirty-day administrative freeze on certain assets,” as Cheung described it.
The greenhouse gas fund is still relatively new but has already disbursed hundreds of millions of dollars to grant recipients. Because the money is held by Citibank, the $20 billion tranche has not been affected by other ongoing freezes of IRA funds by EPA.
EPA had never before used such a financial agent agreement to disburse money, but the Treasury Department and other agencies have used similar arrangements for years, according to Zealan Hoover, who oversaw IRA implementation at EPA under Biden. Placing the money in an accessible bank account allowed the lenders to leverage tens of billions of dollars of private investments, and EPA worked with Treasury to set up the deal.
Hoover also pushed back on claims that the structure was designed to limit oversight, arguing that EPA has granular transaction-level knowledge of all of that money.
Cheung revealed her departure to colleagues in a separate email Tuesday morning that made no reference to the dispute with Martin or her concerns about the pressure she felt.
“I took an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution, and I have executed this duty faithfully during my tenure, which has spanned through numerous Administrations,” Cheung wrote to colleagues, urging them to “fulfill your commitment to pursuing Justice without fear or prejudice.”
Spokespeople for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment
Cheung’s departure, first reported by CNN, comes as President Donald Trump seeks to elevate Martin to the post permanently. Martin, a leader of the pro-Trump 2020 “Stop the Steal” efforts, who has advocated for Jan. 6 defendants and espoused conspiracy theories about the violent attack on the Capitol, oversaw the dismissal of hundreds of Jan. 6 cases in Trump’s first weeks in office. He has also publicly revealed investigations he says the office is undertaking, a break from Justice Department policies about commenting on ongoing probes.
