Energy

Not political? Emails show White House drove failed green-loan in Colorado

 

October 27, 2012***EXCLUSIVE*** MUST CREDIT COMPLETECOLORADO.COMby Todd Shepherd


Recent remarks by President Obama to a Denver-based TV anchor stand in stark contrast to new emails obtained by CompleteColorado.com.

This past Friday, President Obama told KUSA’s Kyle Clark, in response to a question on the federally-backed but failed Colorado company Abound Solar, “And these are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy (DOE), they have nothing to do with politics.”

And just one year ago, White House advisor David Plouffe had this exchange with NBC’s David Gregory regarding the political questions surrounding many of the DOE-backed projects:

DAVID GREGORY:
Were campaign contributors involved here in terms of their projects that ultimately forced the government’s hand?

DAVID PLOUFFE:
Absolutely not. These decisions about the loan program were made by career officials in the Department of Energy on the merits.


CompleteColorado.com has obtained emails that seem to directly contradict Plouffe’s answer, and also challenge the President’s notion that the DOE’s loan decisions were universally autonomous within the agency. The emails also lend even more credence to the theory that the loan to Abound Solar was political payback to Colorado’s wealthy Democratic benefactor and Gang-of-Four member, Pat Stryker.

Click email page 1 to see larger image

Click email page 2 to see larger image

In the above email thread, DOE loan executive Jonathan Silver tells DOE credit advisor Jim McCrea, “You better let him know the WH wants to move Abound forward.” It appears to be a mild scolding to a Treasury advisor, Ian Samuels, who is not moving fast enough to schedule calls regarding Abound.

The second page of the email thread makes mention of “…transaction pressure under which we are all now operating…” This entire email thread happened just a few days before President Obama would hail the government-backed loans as a job creator for Colorado.

Other emails from McCrea have surfaced recently, where the advisor openly lamented his struggle with the loan program, saying, “All in all in the solar field, l think it is extremely easy to pick losers and l really do not know how to pick winners.”

Another email obtained by CompleteColorado.com does even more damage to the notion of Abound’s market-readiness, especially with regards to their government plan with the DOE.

Click email to see larger image 

“Major Issues”…just two months before the Abound loan would be announced.

In response to these emails, Republican Congressman Cory Gardner told Complete Colorado, “These emails directly contradict what the President has told us about the loan guarantee process. He says publicly that the White House isn’t involved, and the emails show this isn’t true. He says the process is free of politics, which these emails also disprove. In a rush to get a good press hit, the White House has wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.”

If you have tips on Abound Solar, email us at completecolorado-at-gmail.com

And a special thanks to all of our readers in Washington D.C.!

***END OF REPORT***

 

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