The latest Solyndra 'bombshell': A 'real scandal'?

Email evidence suggests the Energy Department fought to delay bad news about its green-jobs poster child until after the 2010 midterms

President Obama tours a Solyndra facility last year.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

Newly released emails indicate that the Obama administration, after giving solar-panel maker Solyndra a $535 million loan to create jobs, asked the company to delay announcing layoffs until after the crucial November 2010 midterm elections, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. This news galvanized conservatives, who already charge that the administration played politics with the initial loan — their suspicions fueled by the fact that billionaire Obama fundraiser George Kaiser was a major investor in the now-bankrupt company. The Energy Department says House Republicans are trying to turn a discussion about the timing of a press release into a scandal. How big a deal is this new revelation?

This is a "bombshell": This is yet more evidence that the administration "blatantly lied" about Solyndra, says Guy Benson at Townhall. This latest "bombshell" makes it "transparently obvious" that Obama officials steered money to a major donor under the guise of economic stimulus, then tried to "escape or delay electoral consequences for their own abysmal failures" by slipping "the entire development past the American people." Absolutely "shameless."

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