While the Environmental Protection Agency has touted tens of millions of dollars in savings under the direction of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, newly-obtained emails paint a very different story, and one that EPA leadership privately admitted was less favorable than they were saying in public.

Lee Zeldin, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the EPA during his second term, proudly bragged on social media in February that with DOGE’s help, he had cancelled $67 million in “wasteful [diversity, equity and inclusion] and environmental justice grants.” And yet, according to internal emails obtained and reported on by Notus, internal discussions show that the agency was well aware the figures were inaccurate.

“Just want to flag so you both are aware, there’s a duplicate below… so I think the sum total of potential savings here is only $61M, not $67M,” wrote Kathryn Loving, then the lead of the EPA DOGE team, in an email to EPA leadership. “I know press on this already went out.”

According to NOTUS, the savings from the relevant wave of grant cancellations were based on a list that EPA staff had mistakenly listed the same grant twice, leading to the savings estimate to be inflated by more than $6 million. Before catching the error, Zeldin had gloated about the inaccurate figure in a social media post seen by millions and touted it to multiple right-wing news outlets and on television.

Since learning of the error, however, Zeldin has not taken down his social media post with the inaccurate figure, nor has he made any public corrections, though a press release with a more accurate figure – one that failed to acknowledge the past mistake – was eventually released, though only seen by less than 4,500 people when shared on X, according to NOTUS.

The internal emails also revealed major mistakes by the EPA and DOGE, particularly in how on several occasions, grants were canceled by mistake.

“This was terminated (mistakenly on our part, as there was some confusion),” wrote a regional EPA official to Daniel Coogan, an EPA deputy assistant administrator, referring to mistakenly-cancelled grants for projects in the Midwest and South Central United States.

Those cancelled grants included tens of millions of dollars’ worth of previously approved grants for projects, such as

one for the Michigan city of Benton Harbor

, and while most were restored, some, including the $20 million Benton Harbor project, were later cancelled again, much to the chagrin of the impacted congressional representatives.