Steve Spinner, Energy Department Adviser, Pushed Solyndra Loan, Emails Show

WASHINGTON — An Energy Department adviser and former fundraiser for President Barack Obama pushed for a California solar company to receive a half-billion federal loan, despite pledging to recuse himself because his wife's law firm represented the company, newly released emails show.

The emails show that Steve Spinner, a former Obama fundraiser who helped monitor a clean energy loan guarantee program, was more actively involved in a loan for Solyndra LLC than administration officials have acknowledged.

The emails, released by the administration in response to congressional investigators, show that Spinner was actively involved in a planned September 2009 trip by Vice President Joe Biden to Solyndra's Fremont, Calif., headquarters for a groundbreaking ceremony. Biden did not go on the trip but spoke via satellite. Solyndra declared bankruptcy last month after receiving a $528 million federal loan.

In the emails, Spinner, who founded a sports fitness company, repeatedly pushed Energy Department and White House budget officials to ensure that the loan was finalized before Biden's planned trip. The loan closing was announced at the groundbreaking ceremony on Sept. 4, 2009.

"How -- hard is this? What is he waiting for?" Spinner wrote in an Aug, 28, 2009 email to a DOE official. "I have the OVP (Office of the Vice President) and WH (the White House) breathing down my neck on this. They are getting itchy to get involved."

Later that day, Spinner asked the same DOE official to "walk over there and force him to give you the answer.'

The emails refer to a DOE loan guarantee official who was evaluating the Solyndra loan.

A White House official declined to comment when asked if Spinner's conduct was appropriate.

The Obama administration allowed The Associated Press and other news organizations to read the emails on Friday as it prepared to send them to investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The panel has been looking into the Solyndra and more broadly at the $38 billion loan guarantee program.

Spinner, who served as an adviser to Energy Secretary Steven Chu from April 2009 to September 2010, pledged in writing not to have "active participation" in any solicitation, due diligence or negotiation related to the Solyndra loan, which has become an embarrassment for the White House and a rallying cry for GOP critics of Obama's clean energy program.

Spinner's wife, Allison Berry Spinner, is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a firm in Palo Alto, Calif., that represented Solyndra on the DOE loan. Federal records show the firm received at least $2.4 million in legal fees related to the loan.

In one email, Spinner asks a DOE official whether the White House budget office has completed its review of the Solyndra loan.

"Any word on OMB? Solyndra's getting nervous," he wrote, four minutes after receiving an email form Solyndra.

Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said Spinner acted as a liaison for the loan program under the economic stimulus law, but that he played no role in evaluating individual loan applications.

"Because his wife agreed not to participate in or receive any financial compensation from her law firm's work on behalf of any loan program applicant, Mr. Spinner was authorized to oversee and monitor the progress of applications, ensure that the program met its deadlines and milestones, and coordinate possible public announcements," LaVera said in an email Friday.

Spinner "was not allowed to make decisions on the terms or conditions of any particular loan guarantee or decide whether a particular transaction was approved," LaVera said, adding that the arrangement was approved by the Energy Department's ethics officer.

Spinner now is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank closely identified with the Obama administration, where he focuses on energy policy.

A biography on the CAP website says Spinner "helped oversee the more than $100 billion of loan guarantee and direct lending authority for the Title XVII Loan Guarantee Program and the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program."

An administration official, speaking on condition that he not be identified because of the congressional investigation, said Friday that Spinner "clearly was actively involved in facilitating between DOE and OMB," the White House budget office, but said his main focus was the planned Biden trip for the Solyndra groundbreaking.

Administration officials cited an August 2009 email from Aditya Kumar, an aide to former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, now Chicago mayor. Kumar asks Spinner who are Solyndra's major investors and receives a detailed answer.

The White House "doesn't even know the names of the (Solyndra) investors," said the official, refuting oft-repeated claims by some GOP lawmakers that the Solyndra deal was approved to benefit Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, a Solyndra investor and Obama fundraiser.

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Follow Matthew Daly's energy coverage on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MatthewDalyWDC

Comments

[Gebby]

10:59 AM on 10/10/2011

Doesnt matter that he pushed loans. No evidence of any crimes by administration people. And why are House Republicans joining this rush to condemn all green energy projects as failures? Last week, Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican who chairs the oversight subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said that Solyndra shows “that green energy isn’t going to be the solution.”

This is the point in the story when the GOP hearings begin to look like a take-off on the fanatic police inspector Javert in the play Les Miserables. They are so obsessed with discrediting the president that they are condemning the entire solar industry and making themselves into villains.

At a time when unemployment is stubbornly above 9% and Congress cannot pass a jobs bill that will get people back to work, the GOP is attacking an industry that employs more than 100,000 Americans. That number has doubled since 2009. And most green energy companies qualify as small businesses.

And with many industries still struggling to recover from the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. solar energy industry grew 69 percent in 2010. Compare that to overall GDP growth, which was just 3 percent last year.

[Genders]

03:34 PM on 10/11/2011

FF. !00 MW of installed solar at 5-10$ per Wp(not bad), a nice building for some other company to move, 100M$ in avoided unemployment costs, and nearly all that money spent on main street USA.

[sseldorado]

09:21 PM on 10/09/2011

When you can't compete with China "GOP talking point" you can't continue to operate! Their government is making sure they corner the market on valuable technologies related to future renewable energy supplies. We on the otherhand seem clueless.

[muzjik]

06:37 PM on 10/08/2011

This is certainly buried isn't it? But HuffPO has 2003 5/8 pictures/articles about Republican candidates on their front page but doesn't put up the rather explosive news that a DOE official/ObamaFund raiser/current senior fellow at the Center for American Progress had a major conflict of interest while pushing for the funding of Solydra.

[ghkusa]

06:37 PM on 10/08/2011

Only 8 comments at HP for a story appearing here about 23 hours ago, 11-7-11, suggests how well this story was buried. I did a word search to find it here. It's a big, headline story in the NYT (p. 1), CNN, and FoxNews! This AP story is good but it covers few issues other than Steve Spinner.
.
To minimize negative news coverage, the White House waited till Friday afternoon to produce a large document dump.

Specifically, the White House sent Solyndra emails to Congress showing, among other thinfs, that the US Energy Department was, for some reason, desperate to keep the rapidly sinking, already insolvent Solyndra afloat.

Emails revealed that the Energy Department wanted to lend even millions of dollars more to Solyndra only days before it filed for bankruptcy! That plan was aborted at the last minute because, apparently, the White House, Treasury, and OMB feared "that the ensuing controversy was going to be 'a mess'...."

Laws may have been violated by giving private investors priority over the US government, all despite Treasury's objection.

Significant resignations have begun.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/us/politics/e-mail-shows-senior-energy-official-pushed-solyndra-loan.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/08/politics/white-house-solyndra/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 ;
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/07/energy-department-wanted-to-give-more-money-to-solyndra-emails-show/?test=latestnews

[energydem]

10:53 AM on 10/09/2011

All Administrations dump bad news on Friday afternoon. So what?

[ghkusa]

11:05 PM on 10/09/2011

Absolutely correct: "All Administra­tions dump bad news on Friday afternoon." But, "So what?"

This is "what" (one of several points actually), as clearly stated and supported in my comment above, while HP buried this story (as evidenced by a miniscule 8 comments) other major media headlined it, AP, NYT, CNN, and FoxNews, for example.

Also, there were several other extremely important Solyndra issues which were not included in the story HP ran, such as the possible illegal subordination of the US claim to private claims.

HP has the potential to be a very good publication, but not if they mimic MSNBC's propagandistic approach. But then, as always, “… resist we much, we must and we will much about that be committed.” The Rev. 8-9-11

[kwaut lizard]

01:53 PM on 10/08/2011

FDA and DOE are two of the dirtiest acronyms in the English language.

[Dewts]

12:52 PM on 10/08/2011

this is corporate cronyism. and new facts are coming out almost every day. very dirty stuff going on.

[UKLLee]

01:10 PM on 10/08/2011

Not every day, every friday or holiday when the obama administration does it's document dump.

[observingstupiditydaily]

09:30 AM on 10/08/2011

Why did Solyndra fail, look past what you hear on faux:

"Six months ago, China made it the law that all utilities have to buy any renewable power put on the grid or they get fined. Since then private investment in renewable sources in the country has surged past US and EU levels. Investors are betting on China.
In the second quarter, outside financing of wind turbines, solar panels and low-carbon technology in China soared 72% to $11.5 billion.
China’s renewable sector accounted for one third of renewable investment for the period for the entire world, which totaled $33.9 billion, including all share sales, venture capital, private equity and asset finance."
Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/12tAI)
"Republican congressman who said the U.S. "can't compete with China" to make solar panels or wind turbines."

We can't compete if we don't invest in America and buy American only when it comes to solar and until that mindset becomes reality, we will lose, and lose big.

[energydem]

08:02 AM on 10/09/2011

The key words in this story are "China made it a law that all utilities have to buy any renewable power they put on the grid..." Solyndra was a loan guarantee,an extremely poor policy instrument for stimulating markets. Notwithstanding the specific ethical issues (Spinner clearly violated his recusal and the general counsel's ruling that the investor interests superseded taxpayer's interests, I'm not hearing any corporate cronyism charges and there should be), this is not the type of incentive that we should be using for solar. We should do something like what the Chinese did.

Loan guarantees were in fact statutorily directed by the 2005 EPACT under a Republican Congress. They were selected not because they are the best policy tool but because they "score" low -- around $.10 on the dollar I think so this is doing it on the cheap. Production tax credits are much more effective tools for achieving market share. We get generation, we get experience, we create a market for solar panels because there is a guaranteed rate of return for generation. We should not ignore the fact that too much renewable generation creates reliability and other issues for the existing grid. But loan guarantees are just stupid blunt instruments given to implement by a lumbering and clueless agency with no expertise in this area and ideologically-driven politicals. We need new ways of doing business -- see PCAST report on DOE.

[observingstupiditydaily]

09:18 AM on 10/09/2011

Where do I go but to applaud your post, well said.

[Janine547]

06:22 AM on 10/08/2011

With recent reports suggesting this administration was soon to dump another $5.4 million into Solyndra which was also said to be already collapsing.

[golfvue3]

07:48 PM on 10/11/2011

Just wait til the next scandal erupts...

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46761

Full of dem's - filling their pockets with money and ironically funding jobs in Mexico

[gvnn688]

06:58 PM on 10/07/2011

It appears Spinner was playing both side against the middle.

[VotingPresent]

06:50 PM on 10/07/2011

"From inside the White House," uh - oh. However, no worries since Sheriff Biden was supposed to be the watchdog for the spending within the failed stimulus bill.

[LibertarianCentrist]

06:17 PM on 10/07/2011

Super shady....