Steve Hilton says an audit conducted with artificial intelligence tools uncovered major discrepancies in a government-backed program intended to install solar panels on low-income apartment buildings, raising questions about how hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were ultimately spent.
Hilton said the program had been funded at a rate of $100 million per year beginning in 2015, bringing the total amount allocated to approximately $1 billion by 2025.
“They had this program from this scheme for installing solar panels on low-income apartment buildings. It was $100 million a year since 2015. Right. So we we we used AI tools to audit this. So that’s in by 2025. That’s $1 billion, billion with a B,” Hilton said.
According to Hilton, the audit attempted to trace the spending by looking for invoices connected directly to solar panel installations.
He said the amount that could be tied to those installations was significantly smaller than the total amount of money allocated to the program.
“We found of that 1 billion, the actual amount that had you could find the invoices for solar panel installation, 72,000,920, 8 million,” Hilton said.
Hilton argued that the remainder of the money largely went to nonprofit organizations operating under the banner of environmental justice and community programs.
“Most of the billion dollars went to non-profits doing environmental justice community,” Hilton said.
He then alleged that some of those organizations were involved in political activities rather than concentrating exclusively on the stated environmental goals associated with the original program.
“When you look at what that is, it’s the same old story: voter registration, ballot harvest,” Hilton said.
His argument is that taxpayer-funded programs can be structured around popular or broadly supported policy goals while portions of the money ultimately flow into nonprofit organizations engaged in political organizing.
Hilton said the solar initiative appeared, in his view, to follow that pattern.
“So what they’ve been doing is taking taxpayer money, putting it into these non-profits that sound like they’re working for good policy objectives. Of course, but actually, what they’re doing with it is building the political machine, organizing, and that’s what the scam is,” Hilton said.
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The central issue raised by Hilton is the difference between the overall amount appropriated for the solar program and the amount he says could be verified through invoices for actual solar panel installations.
Based on the figures he cited, the program received roughly $1 billion over a decade, while the audit found only a fraction of that amount directly connected to solar installation invoices.
Hilton did not frame the issue simply as a question of poor accounting. He alleged that the flow of money into nonprofit groups reflected a broader political strategy in which government funds intended for policy programs were used to strengthen activist and electoral networks.
His comments also highlighted the growing use of AI tools in financial and government oversight. Hilton said those tools were used to examine the program and identify the difference between total spending and traceable installation costs.
The audit, as described by Hilton, focused on whether the money could be connected to the physical purpose of the program: installing solar panels on low-income apartment buildings.
Hilton’s conclusion was that too much of the funding ended up elsewhere.
For Hilton, the findings raise a larger concern about taxpayer-funded programs that distribute substantial sums through nonprofit organizations. He argues that such arrangements deserve closer scrutiny when organizations receiving public money are also involved in voter registration, ballot collection efforts or broader political organizing.
His broader claim is that programs presented as environmental or community initiatives can become vehicles for building political infrastructure when taxpayer dollars are routed through nonprofits rather than spent directly on the promised projects.