EXCLUSIVE: Red-State AG Sounds Alarm About Possibility Taxpayers Were On Hook To Benefit China

Republican Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird pressed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Friday about whether American tax dollars were used to support projects benefiting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Bird asked in the letter, exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, whether American tax dollars were ever funneled through the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) under the Biden administration to support institutions with ties to the CCP. Bird raised concerns about the ELI’s close relationships with Chinese government entities and demanded the EPA disclose whether any American grants were used to benefit Chinese institutions.

“China has no right to raise lowans’ –or any Americans’–gas and electric bills. The Biden administration allowed the EPA to team up with radical activists funded by China. Those activists wanted to stop American energy dominance and raise the cost of gas and electricity. This letter is a follow-up to ensure that is no longer happening,” Bird said in a statement.

“ELI has never received funding from the Chinese government,” an ELI spokesperson told the DCNF.

While ELI maintains that some of their Chinese-involved projects did receive American taxpayer funding, they insist that this money was used to hold China accountable and improve Chinese environmental regulations, not to provide China any competitive advantage over the U.S.

Non-profit research organization State Armor published a report July 2 detailing ELI’s involvement with China, alleging that ELI initiatives gave China damaging insight into American environmental regulations and increased U.S. reliance on Chinese supply chains. Furthermore, the report claims it cannot identify a single binding Chinese commitment towards environmental regulation attributable to ELI.

“ELI’s entire operation attacking American energy resilience is damaging to our national security. Most egregious is ELI’s dual-track approach of helping Chinese officials understand, navigate, and front-run American environmental regulations while simultaneously advancing radical policies and climate litigation that weaken American energy production and increase our dependence on Chinese supply chains. The EPA should provide a full accounting of its past funding of ELI and determine whether taxpayer dollars were used to support projects benefiting the Chinese government and China’s geopolitical strategy,” State Armor CEO Michael Lucci said in a statement.

Bird described a potentially problematic ELI program in her letter.

“ELI […] operates the China International Business Dialogue on Environmental Governance (“CIBDEG”), which gives the Chinese government information and analysis concerning industry practices, American and European environmental regulation, and informs about the concerns of multinational businesses operating in China,” Bird said in her letter.