Sometimes, shady pols reveal just a bit more than they probably mean to.

Which brings us to perpetual candidate and Democrat manqué Stacey Abrams, who was called out by President Trump as one of many Democrats who received humongous amounts of government cash in a prime example of government waste and probable fraud in the frenzied final days before Joe Biden left office.

Abrams explained what she did with the $2 billion a group she was affiliated with got from the Environmental Protection Agency to MSNBC's friendly Chris Hayes:

DOGE: Stacey Abrams told MSBNC's Chris Hayes that the Biden EPA gave her $2 billion to buy people new home appliances to reduce electric bills. pic.twitter.com/lOrGThdyQC

— @amuse (@amuse) March 8, 2025

She described running a program called Vitalizing DeSoto in 2023 and 2024, referring to a small town south of Atlanta with 114 people, which she said demonstrated that by replacing old appliances with more energy-efficient new appliances, residents could lower their electrical bills -- and she said she "accomplished" that for 75% of the community (leaving out that it was 74 households).

She continued:

"They got appliances that were lowering their bills right now. One woman who saw her electric bill cut in half from 180 to 98 dollars. That's what we delivered. And based on that program, a coalition of organizations, famous organizations, came together and said, to the EPA, we can do this here, we can do this for millions more Americans. Let us invest the money of America in lowering the cost for Americans. And the EPA said: 'Great! Go for it!'"

Which probably isn't exactly what went down, given that none of us would expect the EPA to give that kind of an answer to just any eager NGO. But of course, this was Joe Biden's administration and she was politician Stacey Abrams, and there was an election on at the time.

Abrams up until now has been the go-to person in those parts for voter registration drives, the get-out-the-vote maven, praised extensively for her work on that front.

Through a five-member group called Power Forward Communities (which included Habitat for Humanity International as another member), the Rewiring America which Abrams had a role in as "senior advisor and consultant," carried out its home appliance giveaway from the $2 billion in sudden federal funding that the EPA today is now trying to claw back.

So from voter registration to now she's going into household appliances, distributing them, ostentibly to lower electricity bills? Sound like a vote-buying scheme?

It did in 2011, when Marxist leader Hugo Chavez of Venezuela had the exact same idea.

Here's Venezuelanalysis, a Chavista outlet, from that era:

Alongside its push for affordable and just housing for all, the Venezuelan government has re-launched a social program designed to make important and essential household appliances available to the population at a reduced cost.

The program, known as “My Well Equipped Home”, was first established in 2010 as the result of an agreement signed between the Venezuelan government and the Chinese company Haier.

After a brief period of inactivity, the Chavez administration re-started the scheme last Friday, bringing a wider range of public and private organizations into the mix to help facilitate the program’s success.

“This initiative of the Bolivarian Government has planned an alliance with the public financial system and for this reason we can offer accessible loans [to the people]”, President Chavez said during a re-launching ceremony held last week in Caracas.

“My Well Equipped Home” will be carried out with the participation of the Communes and Social Protection Ministry and credits will be made available to residents to purchase new commodities via the various communal and public banks established throughout the country.

That washing-machine giveaway was not only low interest loans, which were never collected on, it was Hugo himself picking names out of the crowd, Price-is-Right-style, and declaring that this or that Chavista voter would get such a washing machine for free, so come on down.

Abrams was handing out home appliances to locals in what was a small city in Sumter County, Georgia, too, and here is how that county voted even as the state of Georgia overall went red in 2024.

Whether it was cash for future elections, shut down by Trump's EPA just now, or a scheme that had been going for awhile -- emoluments for votes, it's hard to claim that Abrams's past as a voter-registration person, a get-out-the-vote guru for the Democrats might just have been handing out a little extra on the side to get the kinds of results she did -- at taxpayer expense.

No wonder the EPA and its able new leader, Lee Zeldin, wants this "gold brick" cash scheme investigated, the tossing of billions out the door to activist groups of all claims, before President Trump took office.

Here's his March 3 letter about it:

WASHINGTON – In a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Acting Inspector General (IG), EPA formally referred the well documented and concerning matter of financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and oversight failures with the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) for further investigation. Given the severity of misconduct, waste, conflicts of interest, and potential fraud, the GGRF is undergoing a comprehensive review alongside concurrent investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“It is my pledge to be accountable for every penny the EPA spends. This marks a stark turn from the waste and self-dealing of the Biden-Harris Administration intentionally tossing ‘gold bars off the Titanic.’ The American people deserve accountability and responsible stewardship of their tax dollars. We will continue to deliver,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

For example, a Stacey Abrams linked organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023, was chosen to receive $2 billion—that’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue. To highlight just how unqualified this organization was, the grant agreement provided 90 days to complete "How to Develop a Budget" training even though the organization was instructed to start spending down the balance in the first 21 days of that timeframe. 

“Recent findings reveal a pattern of reckless financial management, blatant conflicts of interest, astonishing sums of tax dollars awarded to unqualified recipients, and severe deficiencies in regulatory oversight under the prior administration,” according to the letter.

This has Hugo written all over it. Hugo used to do this, and it's very well known that Black Lives Matter, a group Abrams has supported, actually consulted with Venezuela's leaders inCaracas itself on common aims. If so, Abrams needs to be answering some questions from Congress and the Department of Justice.

Image: Marcelo Casal Jr./Abr (cropped), via Wikimedia Commons // Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Brazil license