The Washington Post reports that the Solyndra Solar Power scandal is expanding.   As if stealing over $500 million in taxpayer dollars was not enough, and handing it over to an established Obama donor, e-mails released in the ongoing congressional investigation reveal that the Obama administration was prepared to hand over another $469 million if necessary to help Solyndra.

Because Barack Obama’s senior aide and longtime personal friend, Valerie Jarrett, has been mentioned as a contact in the deal, what are the chances such a grant was made to a giant Obama donor, without the President’s involvement?  Investigators are weeding through accounts and communications now to try to find out where all the money went, including almost a billion in private investor money.  Even White House staffers indicate in their own e-mails how unbelievable the gifting of such monies was:

White House career staffers, who had first raised concerns in the fall of 2009 about the Department of Energy providing Solyndra with its first taxpayer-backed loan of $535 million , wrote e-mails in gallows humor in April 2010 about the prospect of giving Solyndra more money. That spring, industry analysts were publicly questioning how the Silicon Valley startup could so quickly be running out both the federal loan and $933 million in private capital.

“Apparently the loan size for Phase II is $469 million,” one Office of Management and Budget analyst wrote of DOE seeking a second loan for Solyndra. The analysts’s name was not released by the committee. “I’ve been told we should expect the see that project soon for conditional commitment.”

Another joked: “Possible to close and default on one before closing on a second??? Could be a new record.”

The agency didn’t shelve the idea for a second loan until October 2010, a Department of Energy spokesman has confirmed. That was the month that Solyndra executives and investors first warned the department that the company was facing the threat of having to liquidate without emergency cash.

More here from The Washington Post.   UNBELIEVABLE!  Despite deep and continuing concerns about the company’s ability to handle its funds, the Obama administration not only granted these giant sums of money to Solyndra officials, but senior aides obviously turned away from concerns of the Office of Management and Budget about the solvency of Solyndra.

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Filed under: Economy, Featured, Inside The KC, Politics by Sonja Eddings Brown, Oct 5, 2011