President Obama and his West Wing aides ignored a subpoena of documents pertaining to the Solyndra loan guarantee even after congressional investigators met with White House officials to negotiate the scope of the subpoena, according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
"The White House's failure to comply with today's document deadline is a sad milestone on the path chosen by this administration to obstruct and delay our investigation rather than cooperate and help deliver answers for taxpayers," committee chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee chairman Cliff Stearns R-Fla., said in a statement this evening.
House investigators requested 12 categories of documents designed to explore a range of issues, such as Obama donor and Solyndra investor George Kaiser's role in the solar company receiving a loan gaurantee.
White House counsel disputed the initial subpoena in November, calling it "a significant intrusion on Executive branch interests." Committee officials met with Obama's attorneys to negotiate the subpoena, but the White House failed to produce the documents by the February 21 deadline.
"Despite an all star cast of presidential aides that have their fingerprints on Solyndra," Upton and Stearns observed, "Larry Summers, Carol Browner, Ron Klain, Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, Jim Messina, Dan Pfeiffer, Jay Carney, Cecilia Munoz, -- the White House is having great difficult turning over relevant internal documents."
The investigators said that Obama's aides have not answered questions about the White House role in restructuring the Solyndra loan, who told Solyndra officials to delay announcing layoffs until after the 2010 midterms, and why the company received so much attention from senior advisers to the president.
"How much longer does the White House believe the truth needs to wait?" Upton and Stearns wrote. "The deadline has come, and we will do what is necessary to answer the many outstanding questions surrounding Solyndra."
