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Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison, who refused to answer questions from Congress about his solar startup's high-profile bankruptcy, has left the company, according to a new court filing. Harrison stepped down on Friday, Solyndra reported in a bankruptcy court document filed late Tuesday. The company said Harrison left "as scheduled," but didn't elaborate. A Solyndra spokesman could not be reached for an explanation. To replace Harrison, Solyndra wants to hire R. Todd Neilson, who served as bankruptcy trustee for boxer Mike Tyson and rap impresario Marion "Suge" Knight. Neilson has a background in forensic accounting, including a stint with the FBI...

How did a failing California solar company, buffeted by short sellers and shareholder lawsuits, receive a $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee for a photovoltaic electricity ranch project—three weeks after it announced it was building new manufacturing plant in Mexicali, Mexico, to build the panels for the project. The company, SunPower (SPWR-NASDAQ), now carries $820 million in debt, an amount $20 million greater than its market capitalization. If SunPower was a bank, the feds would shut it down. Instead, it received a lifeline twice the size of the money sent down the Solyndra drain. Two men with insight into the process...

Happy Monday, Obama administration. According to a new tranche of emails obtained by ABC News, the political wreckage of the Solyndra scandal could get significantly more grisly before all is said and done. In one particularly incriminating note, a staffer at the White House's Office of Management and Budget candidly frets that "bad days" lie ahead : Emails released earlier this month show that at least one official of the Office of Management and Budget worried that Solyndra was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to ill-conceived government loans to green energy companies. “(W)hat’s terrifying is that...

Buried within an ABC News story about today’s release of hundreds of Solyndra-related emails is a reminder of what White House Spokesman Jay Carney said at a press conference late last month after being asked about the involvement of a Department of Energy consultant and Obama fundraiser named Steve Spinner: Carney replied: “It’s my understanding, at least with regard to the gentleman you just mentioned [Steve Spinner], that he had no connection to overseeing the loan guarantee program.” After hearing Carney say that, your first instinct might have been to think, “Hey, Spinner must have a connection to overseeing the...

WASHINGTON — A senior Energy Department official pushed hard for the government’s $535 million loan to the California solar energy company Solyndra even after he had disclosed that his wife’s law firm represented the company and promised to recuse himself from matters related to its loan application, according to e-mails released by federal officials on Friday. The official, Steven J. Spinner, a senior member of the Energy Department’s loan guarantee oversight office and a 2008 Obama fund-raiser, inquired frequently about the progress of the Solyndra loan, urging the White House Office of Management and Budget to move more quickly on...

An elite Obama fundraiser hired to help oversee the administration's energy loan program pushed and prodded career Department of Energy officials to move faster in approving a loan guarantee for Solyndra, even as his wife's law firm was representing the California solar company, according to internal emails made public late Friday. "How hard is this? What is he waiting for?" wrote Steven J. Spinner, a high-tech consultant and energy investor who raised at least $500,000 for the candidate before being appointed to a key job helping oversee the energy loan guarantee program. "I have OVP [the Office of the Vice...

Obama doesn’t regret Solyndra loanBy Ben Geman - 10/03/11 04:38 PM ET President Obama on Monday defended the administration’s half-billion dollar financial support for the solar-panel company Solyndra which filed for bankruptcy in early September. Asked by ABC News if he regretted holding up Solyndra as a model for jobs and clean energy, Obama replied "No, I don't, because if you look at the overall portfolio of loan guarantees that have been provided, overall it's doing well." "And what we always understood was that not every single business is going to succeed in clean energy, but if we want to...

Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law, a little light community organizing, a couple of years timeserving in a state legislature: That's what America's elites regard as an impressive resume rather than a bleak indictment of contemporary notions of "accomplishment." Obama would not have withstood scrutiny in any society with a healthy, skeptical press. Yet, like the high-rolling Wall Street moneybags, they failed to do due diligence. Three years on, nothing has changed. Obama is proposing to raise taxes because of some cockamamie yarn Warren Buffett has been peddling about his allegedly overtaxed secretary. Yet the court eunuchs of the media persist in...

Who arranged the Solyndra loan? A top Obama fund raiser named Steven J. Spinner who, according to ABC, worked to “pick and select fantastic projects” for DOE to fund. During the campaign, he was responsible for raising at least half a million dollars for Obama. Now, he told associates that he “helped oversee the more than $100 billion of loan guarantee and direct lending authority” for DOE’s green-energy lending program. And what a coincidence! Spinner’s wife, Allison’s law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati got $2.4 million in legal fees to handle the legal work in connection with the Solyndra...

Energy Secretary Steven Chu acknowledged Thursday making the final decision to allow a struggling solar company to continue receiving taxpayer money after it had technically defaulted on a $535 million federal loan guaranteed by his agency. Chu spokesman Damien La­Vera said in a statement that the secretary approved the restructuring agreement for Solyndra because it gave the company “the best possible chance to succeed in a very competitive marketplace and put the company in a better position to repay the loan.” On the political front, Chu’s admission came as some members of Congress were asking whether Chu went too far...

Thugs in suits, I was thinking. What did they do with over half a billion bucks of taxpayer money? With that kind of score, why would some dumb criminal even think of robbing a liquor store, a drug store, or even a bank? The real money is in white-collar capers, with special treatment and little chance of arrest. All you've got to do is send a team of grifters to the offices of Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett and the bucks will be delivered to your bank account with thanks from a grateful administration. ... whoever agreed to put the...

This little-known government bank, the Federal Financing Bank [FFB], had a zero balance in 2008 for green energy projects, but now, with little Congressional oversight, it is giving out billions of dollars in loans to White House pet projects often at dirt-cheap interest rates below 1%. In July alone, the government bank, which had $61 billion in assets, lent nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in taxpayer funds with no Congressional checks and balances. Plus the bank is funding the insolvent U.S. Post Office; the White House’s expensive green car projects at Ford Motor, Nissan and Tesla Motors; a...

If you thought the $535 million Solyndra scandal had chastened the fearless venture capitalists of the Obama Administration, think again. The Department of Energy shovelled out $1.1 billion in new loan guarantees to solar projects in Nevada and Arizona Wednesday, and more deals are pending before the $18 billion program funded by the 2009 stimulus expires Friday.

Until now the Solyndra scandal only reached the White House in the guise of e-mails from staffers fretting about the political implications of the disastrous bankruptcy and how it would reflect on the President’s “Winning the Future” rhetoric. Until now, the Solyndra scandal was a circumstantial log of White house visits by a big Obama donor who also was the failed solar company’s chief investor (those visits occurring right before a half-billion dollar loan guarantee was awarded by Obama’s Dept. of Energy). Until now, the White House’s direct involvement in the Solyndra scandal appeared to be over-zealous operatives looking to...

Energy Department approves $737 million solar loan guarantee By Andrew Restuccia - 09/28/11 11:02 AM ET The Energy Department announced Wednesday that is has finalized a $737 million loan guarantee for a Nevada solar project. The decision comes several weeks after a California-based solar manufacturer that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration in 2009 filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers, setting off a firestorm in Washington. The $737 million loan guarantee will help finance construction of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-megawatt solar-power-generating facility in Nye County, Nev. The project is sponsored...

The Energy Department announced Wednesday that is has finalized a $737 million loan guarantee for a Nevada solar project. The decision comes several weeks after a California-based solar manufacturer that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration in 2009 filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers, setting off a firestorm in Washington. The $737 million loan guarantee will help finance construction of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-megawatt solar-power-generating facility in Nye County, Nev. The project is sponsored by Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve. Crescent Dunes is the latest solar project to...

The Energy Department will announce later Wednesday that is has finalized a $737 million loan guarantee for a Nevada solar project. The decision comes several weeks after a California-based solar manufacturer that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration in 2009 filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers, setting off a firestorm in Washington.

...According to a report released today, a year and a half after being granted an enormous government loan, Solyndra violated the terms of that loan and technically defaulted on it. This should have frozen the loan that the energy company received, thus not allowing them to use up the rest of the money the government had given them. However, that did not happen. Instead, it has been revealed that the Energy Department went out of its way to restructure the loan to Solyndra, thus allowing them to violate the terms of the loan and yet continue to use it. The...

Solyndra LLC had such steep financial problems in late 2010 that the company violated terms of its loan-guarantee agreement with the Department of Energy and technically defaulted on its $535 million loan, according to people familiar with the matter. The failed solar-panel maker ran so short of cash in December 2010 that it was unable to satisfy certain terms of its U.S. loan agreement, these people said. The agreement required Solyndra to provide $5 million in equity to a subsidiary building its factory but cash-flow problems prevented those payments. The Energy Department ultimately restructured the loan agreement to help keep...

Waxman to Issa: Get Solyndra facts straightBy Ben Geman - 09/27/11 07:32 AM ET Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is rebutting House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) claim that Waxman helped the now-bankrupt solar company Solyndra secure its $535 million federal loan guarantee. Waxman said in a letter to Issa on Monday that he had no role in the financing. “I am writing to let you know that I had no involvement in the selection of the Solyndra loan. In fact, the first time I met with representatives from Solyndra was in July 2011, when the company’s...