A government watchdog filed an ethics complaint Friday against a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) attorney who publicly aired grievances about the Trump administration’s criticism of a Biden-era climate program that directed billions to green groups linked to Democratic donors and insiders.
Democracy Restored alleged in its complaint that James F. Drummond — a former EPA lawyer who blasted the Trump administration’s handling of the Biden-era Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) — may have violated Maryland’s Rules of Professional Conduct by speaking to Politico’s E&E News about program details and criticizing his former employer. Though Drummond resigned his Maryland law license in March, the complaint alleges he may have violated ethical duties to his former client and urges the Maryland Attorney Grievance Commission to investigate and impose any necessary discipline.
“Mr. Drummond’s statements regarding the EPA and its leadership after his time representing the agency as an attorney are not only a breach of legal ethics, but the rules of his state of Maryland. The Maryland Attorney Grievance Commission must investigate these actions by Mr. Drummond and act where necessary,” Democracy Restored Director Houston Keene told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Not doing so will only embolden future attorneys representing administrations of either or any party to engage in these petty politics knowing there will be no consequences for their actions.”
James Drummond Complaint DR With Letterhead by audreystreb
The GGRF was a Biden-era EPA program that shelled out $20 billion to nonprofits laden with former high-level Obama and Biden-era staffers as well as Democratic donors despite federal reviewers flagging potential conflict-of-interest and excessive executive compensation concerns. The program is being investigated by the EPA’s inspector general, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI over potential fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars, and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has repeatedly pointed to the program as an example of wasteful spending during the Biden administration.
Drummond was heavily involved in advising on the GGRF, an EPA spokesperson told the DCNF. Drummond could not be reached for comment by the DCNF for this story.
The former EPA lawyer told E&E News in an article published on July 23 that he “got very upset about the false statements coming out about the GGRF” and that he resigned earlier than he’d planned to from the agency in March. Though the E&E News article notes that Drummond had a personal lawyer present and declined to answer certain questions due to attorney-client privilege, Democracy Restored alleges that some of the details he did share still breached legal ethics.
“Mr. Drummond, apparently placing his politics above his role as an attorney, took it upon himself to publicly talk about what occurred during his representation of the EPA,” the complaint states. “He then went on to walk a reporter through various experiences, observations, decision-making strategies, and legal strategies his client performed while he was serving as an EPA attorney. But that is almost certainly not appropriate for an attorney. An attorney cannot correct the record about a client’s activities, unless the client has given him the permission to do so.”
Drummond told E&E News that he’d never seen an administration try to claw back grants awarded under a previous administration.
“I find it very upsetting to hear things come out of EPA that I know are not true about what we did and how it was done,” Drummond told E&E News, referencing Zeldin’s comments about the GGRF. “This is not normal. … It’s shortsighted and it’s inconsistent with good business relationships with your grantees to engage in this kind of activity.”
In his public remarks on the GGRF, Zeldin has frequently mentioned a video covertly recorded by conservative activist group Project Veritas in which a Biden EPA official likened the last-minute push to bankroll green groups ahead of President Donald Trump’s arrival to hurling “gold bars off the Titanic.” The Biden EPA awarded program funds on a timeline that allowed changes to the terms to meet the looming deadline, with EPA documents revealing that staff was instructed to “accept that not all questions will be resolved prior to award.”
Drummond declined to answer questions about adjustments to the program’s terms and conditions, citing attorney-client privilege, though he told E&E News that the conflict-of-interest allegations against the green groups and some of their Democrat staffers were false.
“As an attorney, Mr. Drummond should be well aware of his ethical obligations with respect to past clients. During his time at EPA, Mr. Drummond was heavily involved in advising on matters related to the Biden-Harris Administration’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund,” an EPA spokesperson told the DCNF. “The choice to be interviewed to discuss confidential information and potentially privileged matters learned during representation as an agency lawyer raises serious ethical concerns and could result in disciplinary action or potential disbarment.”
The program’s awardees, the Coalition for Green Capital (CGC), Power Forward Communities (PFC) and the Climate United Fund (CU) have maintained the stance that they were rightfully awarded the funds and sued EPA and Citibank after the agency froze the accounts holding the money in February. An appeals court then stepped in to block an earlier ruling that would have required the EPA to release the frozen funds.
A CU spokesperson told the DCNF that the lawsuit is “about whether EPA broke federal law when it abruptly froze funds and terminated a program that Congress passed, and under which funds were already obligated and disbursed” and argued that Zeldin’s “spurious claims about waste or abuse … have been unsubstantiated by his own lawyers in court.”
Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer Marc Sacks told Washington, D.C., District Judge Tanya Chutkan that though he was not presenting evidence of waste, fraud and abuse, “the reason I cannot is because this Court is not in a position to rule upon whether or not this termination was consistent with the contracts,” according to the court filings.
Zeldin told reporters in April that judges’ legal filings in the case have not referenced some of the evidence he has highlighted and emphasized as he critiqued some legacy media outlets for writing that there was “no evidence” for waste, fraud and abuse while the acting inspector general has noted that there is evidence the program had reduced oversight.
“The more you look at this, the worse it gets. Not only was the Biden EPA tossing billions of taxpayer dollars ‘off the Titanic,’ to borrow their language, but under every stone you find more well documented incidents of self-dealing and conflicts of interest, unqualified recipients, and intentionally reduced agency oversight,” Zeldin told the DCNF previously. “These grants were rightfully terminated months ago, and Congress just fully repealed the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program in the One Big Beautiful Bill.”
PFC did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment and CGC declined to comment.
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