It was discovered two months ago by Congressional investigators that the Department of Energy urged the now bankrupt Solyndra to delay the announcement of hundreds of workers until after the 2010 mid-term election. The White House claimed to have no prior knowledge of the layoffs nor the health of Solyndra, but digging deeper into the massive holiday weekend document dump clearly reveals the White House knew about the layoffs in advance. The e-mails reveal the White House was very concerned about the bad press they would they would face if the news leaked of Solyndra layoffs prior to the mid-terms.
“Here’s the deal — Solyndra is going to announce that they are laying off 200 of their 1,200 workers,” White House deputy energy adviser Heather Zichal wrote Oct. 27, 2010, to her boss, Carol Browner and two other deputies. “No es bueno. Sounds like they will now make this announcement next week but press is sniffing around so it could come out sooner.”
The emails from this dump continued to paint a picture of what was going on behind the scenes in the months leading to Solyndra’s collapse and it is becoming even more clear the dance that was going on between the Department of Energy and the White House. The DOE alerted the White House to the “no es bueno” situation at Solyndra, which would have undermined Democratic arguments that their spending spree in 2009 created real jobs rather than unbearable risk for borrowed taxpayer funds. After the White House got alerted to the situation, suddenly the Solyndra announcement never takes place, and two days later the primary investor has to explain internally that the DOE pressured them to delay the announcement.
“The sad truth is the Solyndra loan was tainted by stimulus politics from the outset, being rushed out the door over the protests of the administration’s top experts, layoffs delayed until after the 2010 elections, and an indefensible loan restructuring, all of which has left taxpayers on the hook for half a billion dollars,” said Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., chairman of the investigations subcommittee.
It is increasingly clear the White House claiming it had no prior knowledge of Solyndra’s collapse is, frankly, no es bueno. It’s obvious the White House used taxpayer funds as leverage to manipulate a private enterprise for purely political/electoral benefit for Obama, a nefarious sequence of events to say the least. One has to wonder what lies ahead in the next primary election Friday night document dump.
-Buzz