Hide the truth…fast!
The self-labeled “most transparent administration in history” is actually the most slimy, lying, low down secretive administration in history. This isn’t the first time the communication from private emails issue has come up. This is the same administration that held secret meeting at coffee shops, across from the White House, to duck disclosure laws and the Secret Service’s visitor logs.
Now we learn the guy responsible for all these failed taxpayer-backed loans to Obama’s bundlers told staffers to not include their personal e-mails in correspondence with DOE business. After all, it’s easier to hide from disclosure laws if you secretly communicate with bundlers via personal e-mail accounts.
From WaPo:
The former head of the Obama administration’s controversial clean-energy loan program warned a staff member last year not to include personal e-mail addresses in official correspondence, to prevent the personal accounts from being subpoenaed, documents show.
Jonathan Silver, a political appointee who oversaw the Energy Department’s $38 billion program, sent the warning days before a centerpiece of the program — solar-panel makerSolyndra — declared bankruptcy, pushing a congressional investigation into high gear.
“Don’t ever send an email on doe email with a personal email addresses,” Silver wrote Aug. 21, 2011, from his personal account to a program official’s private Gmail account. “That makes them subpoenable.”
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wrote a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Tuesday, charging that he and Silver appear to have given “inaccurate” or “misleading” testimony to Congress about their handling of the loan program. Silver had testified that no one in the department used personal e-mails to conceal internal discussions about the program.
Is there a member of Obama’s regime that hasn’t lied or lied when testifying?
Silver repeatedly communicated about internal and sensitive loan decisions via his personal e-mail, the newly released records show, and more than a dozen other Energy Department staff members used their personal e-mail to discuss decisions involving taxpayer-funded loans as well. The Washington Post received the e-mails from Republican investigators on the committee.
“The frequent use of non-government e-mail accounts and the contents of e-mails leaves little doubt that DOE officials participated in an intentional effort to shield their communications from legal scrutiny and the public,” committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and subcommittee Chairmen Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) wrote to Chu.
Silver said Tuesday that he did not mean to avoid congressional scrutiny. “I intended to advise my DOE colleagues to use their official email for official purposes and personal email for personal purposes,” he said in a statement. “It was never my intention to avoid the requirements of the Federal Records Act.”
Except for the fact that he did so through his own personal e-mail account. See his e-mails here.
Silver’s warning came as he and senior White House officials were desperately negotiating with Solyndra investors to try to keep the company alive. The government had backed Solyndra’s panel-manufacturing facility in Fremont, Calif., with a $535 million government loan, and one of its leading investors was the family foundation and equity firm of George Kaiser, a top Obama donor.
