Senior DC prosecutor quits rather than get to bottom of fishy funding decision by Biden EPA

A career prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, D.C., abruptly tendered her resignation this week after a tug-of-war with Trump officials regarding a questionable Environmental Protection Agency grant issued under the Biden administration.

Denise Cheung, head of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney's office, announced her resignation Tuesday after interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin and others asked her to conduct a grand jury investigation into the unidentified multibillion-dollar grant.

Trump officials apparently suspect that the grant may be associated with wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States. However, after rifling through documents provided by the deputy attorney general's office, Cheung and colleagues determined that they did not have sufficient evidence to justify a grand jury probe, Reuters reported.

'Based upon the evidence I have reviewed, I still do not believe there is sufficient evidence ... to tell the bank there is probable cause to seize the particular accounts identified.'

Trump officials then ordered Cheung to freeze the assets associated with the grant. After consulting with the FBI field office in D.C., Cheung wrote to the bank and recommended a "30-day administrative freeze on certain assets," she said in her resignation letter to Martin.

However, Martin and others were not satisfied. Martin then called Cheung Monday, "yelling at her for failing to do what acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove’s office had asked," according to the Washington Post, citing one unnamed source.

Trump officials then demanded that Cheung send a second letter to the bank to freeze more assets as part of a criminal investigation. Rather than comply, Cheung quit.

"When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed that there was sufficient evidence," she wrote to Martin.

"Based upon the evidence I have reviewed, I still do not believe there is sufficient evidence to issue the letter you described, including sufficient evidence to tell the bank there is probable cause to seize the particular accounts identified."

In a letter to colleagues revealing her resignation after 24 years, Cheung struck the same self-important tone evident in other resignation letters. "This office is a special place," she wrote, according to the Post. "I took an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution, and I have executed this duty faithfully."

The U.S. attorney's office and Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Just last week, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that his office had uncovered $20 billion in taxpayer dollars that EPA officials had allegedly scurried to toss "off the Titanic" before President Donald Trump was inaugurated on January 20. This money was "parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA" and subjected to little oversight, Zeldin claimed.

Though Zeldin noted that the bank is not suspected of any wrongdoing, he called for the bank to terminate its financial agent agreement and for the EPA to reassume responsibility for all of that money.

"The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over," Zeldin assured viewers of his X video.

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