No wonder the White House stonewalled on releasing Solyndra documents. Last week’s document dump is a lesson in why Washington has no business playing investment banker.
“When this investigation began, our goal was to determine whether the U.S. Department of Energy was making wise investments,” said Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) on Friday. “After nearly nine months of investigation, we were forced to issue subpoenas to compel their cooperation. This afternoon, the White House Counsel’s office turned over an initial document production in response to our subpoena.”
The documents aren’t pretty.
“The Feb. 25, 2011 e-mail that sparked the deliberations landed on West Wing desks just as the solar energy firm Solyndra was starting to show outward signs of financial trouble,” reports ABC News. “It was sent by Dan Carol, a former Obama campaign staffer and clean-energy advocate. Carol’s four-page proposal to restructure the Energy Department included the blunt recommendation that (Energy Sec) Chu be fired, and that his leadership team also be replaced.”
“Not because they aren’t talented,” Carol writes, “but because that appointment will be caught up in the wave of GOP attacks that are surely coming over Solyndra and other inside DOE deals that have gone to Obama donors and have underperformed. No reason to fuel that coming storm, and believe me it will come.”
The problem, in other words, was not that Obama is wasting taxpayer dollars on flying pigs — but that Congress might find out.