White House under pressure to release Solyndra details

Solyndra project in France

Pressure on Barack Obama and his agency chiefs to release details regarding the half-billion dollars of taxpayer money lost in the Solyndra scandal is surging, with two lawsuits and a new round of congressional letters demanding details.

Solyndra, a high-tech "green" company that produced solar panels, was granted, in violation of standard government procedures, a loan guarantee of $535 million by administration officials using taxpayer money. The firm then went bankrupt.

Since then, watchdogs of the public purse and members of Congress have been trying to find out how it happened and who was responsible.

Without much success.

That prompted Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on Overnight and Investigations, today to dispatch letters, along with Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., to the counsels for the president and vice president.

The congressmen want an end to the delays that have blocked the documents and records that have been subpoenaed.

Meanwhile, the non-profit watchdog Judicial Watch has filed lawsuits over the information that remains concealed by the Obama administration, which repeatedly has touted its dedication to transparency.

Stearns and Upton also wrote to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, expressing concern that the requested Solyndra documentation has not been provided.

"We have serious concerns … relating to your search for documents responsive to the committee's subpoena," the letters to the counsels for Barack Obama and Joe Biden state. They add "that White House and vice president's office personnel were intimately involved in decisions related to Solyndra and the loan guarantee program."

Cited are names such as Larry Summers, Carol Browner, Ron Klain and Valerie Jarrett.

One memo, from Klain, Summers and Browner from 2010 to Obama, discussed problems with the loan guarantee program and talks about restructuring the program, according to the letters.

"The refusal by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to make certain employees available to the committee for interviews, briefings or hearings is simply unacceptable … As OMB is encompassed within the executive office of the president, it is our understanding that the White House counsel's office has been involved in the decision to deny the committee access to those individuals … If the White House persists in stonewalling this committee, however, we will not hesitate to take the necessary steps to ensure that there is no further obstruction of our investigation."

To Kathryn Ruemmler, counsel to the president, the members of Congress noted, "In your letter you state that instead of searching for the documents specified in the committee's subpoena, you unilaterally redefined (and narrowed) the language … You then state that you were unable to find any responsive documents in three of your four newly defined categories. First, the recipient of a duly authorized subpoena from the Congress of the United States cannot simply redefine the scope of the subpoena. Second, the language you utilized to redefine the committee's document request carefully excludes documents in your possession which are relevant.

"You are … currently in violation of the subpoena and must immediately produce all responsive documents or the committee will be forced to take further steps to ensure compliance. "

To Cynthia Hogan, the chief counsel for Biden, the committee leveled many of the same accusations.

"If the White House has nothing to hide, producing all of the relevant documents in an open and transparent manner should not cause any undue hardship," the members of Congress said. "We had hoped to obtain your cooperation to avoid the need to issue additional subpoenas for testimony."

To Chu, the congressman said they know relevant materials exist.

"For example, we are aware that you met with OMB directors Peter Orszag and Jacob Lew in July 2010 and January 2011, respectively, regarding the loan guarantee program. Documents … show that the Solyndra loan guarantee was a topic of discussion at those meetings."

Judicial Watch, the public interest organization that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, said its lawsuits were filed against Obama's Department of Energy and the Office of Management and Budget.

The legal actions follow the organization's Freedom of Information Act requests seeking records about the loan guarantees to Solyndra, communications between the DOE and any other government agency about Solyndra, and communications between the DOE and Solyndra investors.

Judicial Watch officials said the administration agencies had not fully responded to the requirements.

"Our new FOIA lawsuits show the Solyndra scandal is heating up and that the Obama administration is in cover-up mode," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "The American people are set to lose $535 million and want to know why it happened. Obama administration lies and potential criminal misconduct by high-ranking government officials make this a scandal of the first order."

The company, which made "innovative cylindrical solar systems for commercial rooftops," announced at the end of August that it was suspending operations and firing 1,100 fulltime and temporary employees.

Solyndra said it could not achieve "full-scale operations rapidly enough to compete in the near term with the resources of larger foreign manufacturers."

"This competitive challenge was exacerbated by a global oversupply of solar panels and a severe compression of prices that in part resulted from uncertainty in governmental incentive programs in Europe and the decline in credit markets that finance solar systems," the company said.

CEO Brian Harrison was quoted in the company announcement at the time saying, "We are incredibly proud of our employees, and we would like to thank our investors, channel partners, customers and suppliers, for the years of support that allowed us to bring our innovative technology to market. Distributed rooftop solar power makes sense, and our customers clearly recognize the advantages of Solyndra systems."

However, the half-billion dollars lost by taxpayers wasn't mentioned.

The loan even was structured so that private investors were lined up in front of taxpayers should the company, which burned through the $535 million in about two years, default.

During an earlier hearing, members of Congress pointed to internal emails suggesting that there was a strategy in place to rush the Solyndra loan approval through to meet the schedule timeframe for a photo-op for the administration.

One such note said, "We have ended up with a situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of the week). … We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews and have the approval set the date for the announcement rather than the other way around."