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.
This is an outrageous example of crony capitalism. That this was even permitted to happen shows how compromised and degraded our supposed regulatory processes are. He should be fired and perhaps indicted. Instead the Obama Administration, by their silence and stonewalling, is tacitly defending him.
Ethical cripples, all of them. It’s no wonder that public trust in the White House and Congress is at historic lows.