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Solyndra execs invoke Fifth Amendment more than a dozen times
House Republicans pressed top executives at the failed solar company Solyndra Friday for answers regarding the company’s decision to declare bankruptcy just two years after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration.
But the executives, surrounded by photographers, invoked their Fifth Amendment rights more than a dozen times during the hearing of a House Energy and Commerce Committee investigative panel.
Democrats on the panel criticized Republicans for peppering the executives with questions, arguing it was simply an effort to gain the attention of the press.
“What we have instead heard today is a line of questions that seem designed to create catchy sound bites,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the committee.
“I think it’s unseemly and inappropriate for members to be asking questions they know they will not answer.”
The Solyndra bankruptcy has ignited a firestorm in Washington, with Republicans alleging that the Obama administration missed a series of red flags that hinted at the company’s financial troubles as it worked to approve the $535 million stimulus-law loan guarantee.
“Congress and the American taxpayer have a right to know whether this loan guarantee was rushed out the door before it was ready for prime time, whether the administration doubled down on a bad bet after knowing of the company’s dubious commercial prospects or, even worse, whether $535 million taxpayer dollars were wasted on false or incomplete information,” Oversight and Investigations subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) said Friday.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pummeled the Solyndra executives Friday for painting a rosy picture of the company’s finances during a July meeting in Washington with members of the committee.
“He looked me in the eye and assured me that everything was just fine and the company was on track to be cash-flow positive,” Stearns said.
“It was an airtight scheme that trumps the Bernie Madoff scheme,” Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) said to the executives. “It appears you knew the Titanic was sinking and you got to the lifeboat first.”
Less than two months after meeting with the panel, Solyndra announced that it would file for bankruptcy, suspend its solar panel manufacturing operations and lay off 1,100 workers.
“Solyndra has left taxpayers holding the bag for a $535 million loan guarantee and we still can’t get answers,” full committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said.
Republicans on the committee, led by Upton and Stearns, have launched an investigation into the Solyndra loan guarantee, releasing a series of emails they say show that the White House tried to rush a final decision on the company’s financing so that Vice President Biden could publicly announce approval of the loan guarantee at the September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s new factory.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has launched a separate investigation into federal loans, and several federal agencies, including the Justice Department, are also probing the Solyndra loan.
The Solyndra debacle has revived long-time Republican criticisms of the economic stimulus law, as well as the White House’s clean-energy agenda.
“We have concerns about the stimulus passed in 2009 and we have concerns now that it failed to create the jobs that were promised,” Upton said at the hearing.
The White House, for its part, has aggressively defended its clean-energy investments, denying any wrongdoing related to the Solyndra incident.
Administration officials have pointed to a series of letters sent by Republicans on the committee, including Upton, pressing for Energy Department loan guarantees in their home districts.
Upton defended the efforts of GOP lawmakers to push for loan guarantees in their states, arguing that the Republican investigation is not about the merits of clean-energy projects but the “use of taxpayer dollars on a company that was known to pose serious risks before a single dime went out the door.”
Democrats on the panel blasted Republicans Friday for cutting $100 million from the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program for advanced energy projects to offset the cost of emergency disaster aid in a stopgap spending measure that was approved by the House early Friday morning.
“That’s not an economic plan for the future, it’s a job-killing strategy that keeps us tied to our fossil fuel past,” Waxman said.
Still, even after the spectacle of Friday’s hearing, lawmakers said Friday that their investigation is far from over.
“Let me just warn you and the other folks involved in this taxpayer rip-off,” Upton told the executives. “We’re not done. No, we’re not.”
—This story was originally posted at 10:31 a.m. and updated at 11:17 a.m.
