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White House not expected to comply with Solyndra subpoena from House GOP
The White House is not expected to comply with a subpoena issued by House Republicans for documents related to the $535 million loan guarantee to the failed solar firm Solyndra.
White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler blasted the GOP on Friday for issuing the subpoena, calling it "unprecedented and unnecessary." And a senior administration official told The Hill on Monday that the White House faces major logistical hurdles in complying with the request, which calls for all internal communications involving Solyndra.
Rejection of the subpoena request would set up a high-profile clash between the White House and Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigative panel, which voted along party lines to issue the subpoena last week.
"The subpoena is effectively asking for any documents in the White House that refer or relate to the Solyndra loan guarantee,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record about the subpoena.
The subpoena specifically requests documents in four categories, including all communications with Solyndra investors, as well as documents on the decision to finalize the loan in 2009 and restructure it in February. More broadly, the subpoena asks for any communications about Solyndra’s financial troubles.
But the official said the categories do not narrow the scope of the request.
"Regardless of the fact that there are four delineated categories, those are subsets of the requested scope,” the official said.
The subpoena, which was delivered to the White House at 8:15 p.m. on Thursday, calls for “all documents referring or relating in any way to the $535 million loan guarantee issued to Solyndra, Inc., by the Department of Energy."
The official said it would take a massive effort to comply with the subpoena, noting, for example, that the White House would be required to provide the committee with thousands of documents related to logistics of President Obama’s 2010 visit to the company.
"The volume of material generated to plan a presidential visit is immense on its own,” the official said.
Committee Republicans have given the White House until noon Thursday to produce the requested documents.
The White House last week blasted Republicans for issuing the subpoena, arguing it was premature, given attempts to negotiate a compromise that would provide the committee with some documents.
Given their objections, White House officials are not expected to comply with the subpoena by the deadline.
Ruemmler, in a letter to the committee Friday, called the subpoena “unprecedented and unnecessary.” She accused Republicans of trying to score political points in their ongoing investigation into the loan guarantee to the company, which filed for bankruptcy in early September and laid off 1,100 workers.
She said committee Republicans have not offered adequate justification for the breadth of their petition nor explained why they will not accept the White House’s proposal to narrow their document request.
“The Committee has rejected that approach without any justification other than a general curiosity about internal White House communications,” Ruemmler said in the letter. “Such curiosity is not a sufficient justification for encroaching on longstanding and important Executive Branch confidentiality interests, particularly when none of the more than 85,000 pages of documents produced to date evidence any favoritism to political supporters or wrongdoing by the White House.”
Ruemmler met with Republicans and Democrats on the committee last week in an effort to come to a compromise on the documents request. Ruemmler said the White House would provide documents to the committee if lawmakers agreed to narrow the scope of the request.
"We already told the committee where we thought an appropriate, narrow scope would be,” the official said.
But Republicans nonetheless moved forward with the subpoena, arguing that the White House’s compromise efforts were too little, too late.
“We have been reasonable every step of the way in this investigation, and it is a shame that the Obama Administration and House Democrats continue to put up partisan roadblocks to hide the truth from taxpayers,” committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said in a statement late last week after the White House blasted Republicans for issuing the subpoena.
The Obama administration says it has consistently cooperated with the Solyndra investigation.
"This idea that we have stonewalled or been slow-walking this is preposterous,” the official said.
The White House, its Office of Management and Budget, the Treasury Department and the Energy Department have provided more than 80,000 pages of documents to Republicans in recent months. The documents provided include communications between the White House and Solyndra.
The Solyndra bankruptcy has set off a firestorm in Washington, with Republicans using it to raise questions about Obama's green jobs agenda and alleging that politics clouded the administration's judgment.
Republicans' investigation has not found evidence of political favoritism.
But emails released by Republicans show that the White House pressed administration officials to make a swift decision on helping Solyndra. They also show that there was disagreement within the administration on the wisdom of approving the loan guarantee.
