White House sends House GOP more Solyndra documents

The White House sent House Republicans more than 400 pages of additional internal Solyndra documents Friday amid a GOP contempt threat.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans had threatened earlier this month to pursue contempt charges against the White House if officials did not provide more documents in response to a November subpoena. They gave a Feb. 21 deadline for more documents.

{mosads}The 463 pages of documents that were delivered to committee Republicans Friday consist largely of references to Solyndra in White House emails, and offer little new information about the loan guarantee.

The White House’s top lawyers, in a letter to Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the documents offer no evidence that the 2009 approval of the $535 million Solyndra loan was influenced by politics.

“Once again, none of these documents supports the Committee’s allegations about favoritism to campaign contributors or improper White House involvement in the decision-making process,” reads the letter from White House chief counsel Kathryn Ruemmler and Cynthia Hogan, counsel to the vice president.

“Instead, these documents, like the 187,000 pages previously provided by Executive Branch agencies, demonstrate what we have said throughout the course of this investigation: decisions on the Solyndra loan guarantee were made on the merits by the Department of Energy.”

The White House called on Republicans to end its quest for additional Solyndra documents.

“Given the minimal value of these documents and the substantial burden that these searches entail, we once again encourage the Committee to reconsider its overbroad requests,” the letter said.

The White House excluded from their search documents that had already been provided to the committee by other agencies, press releases or news stories, among other items.

In addition, the White House said it excluded “a small number of internal White House documents that make only incidental reference to Solyndra, but otherwise implicate long-standing Executive Branch institutional interests.” 

The additional Solyndra documents come one day after the White House
agreed to make executive branch officials available for interviews with
committee staff. The move caused Republicans on the panel to cancel a
planned subpoena vote aimed at compelling the officials to appear for
interviews.

Republicans on the committee’s investigative panel voted in November to subpoena the White House for all its Solyndra communications.

GOP lawmakers have alleged that the White House has not been responsive enough to the November subpoena, a charge administration officials reject.

The White House has previously delivered more than 500 pages of documents to the committee in response to the subpoena, as well as more than 1,000 pages sent before the subpoena was issued.

Federal agencies, including the Energy Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget, have separately sent the committee more than 180,000 pages of documents.

The documents include no evidence to support GOP claims that the Solyndra loan was approved for political reasons. But they do reveal a number of things that could be uncomfortable for the White House, including that administration officials raised concerns about the wisdom of issuing the loan guarantee.