fbi agents armed with search warrants descended thursday morning on bankrupt solar company solynrda.

The investigation comes after a request by the department of energy's inspector general, fbi spokesman peter lee told nbc bay area news.

Agents arrived at solyndra at 7a.m. And were examining the factory. Solynrda has a skeleton crew of 100 workers on the scene, who are closing the factory down.

Solyndra filed for bankruptcy last week, shocking both workers and the obama administration, which had given the startup hundreds of millions of dollars in low interest loans. Congress has demanded a hearing into the matter.

Not only does the now-bankrupt solar energy firm Solyndra have a cozy financial relationship with the Obama administration, company representatives also made numerous visits to the White House to meet with administration officials, The Daily Caller has learned.

According to White House visitor logs, between March 12, 2009, and April 14, 2011, Solyndra officials and investors made no fewer than 20 trips to the West Wing. In the week before the administration awarded Solyndra with the first-ever alternative energy loan guarantee on March 20, four separate visits were logged.
George Kaiser, who has in the past been labeled a major Solyndra investor as well as a Obama donor, made three visits to the White House on March 12, 2009, and one on March 13. Kaiser has denied any direct involvement in the Solyndra deal and through a statement from his foundation said he “did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan.”

But the countless meetings at the White House seem hardly coincidental. Kaiser, in fact, is responsible for 16 of the 20 meetings that showed up on the White House logs.

In the meetings on March 12, Kaiser met with former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors Austan Goolsbee at 11 a.m., Senior Advisor Pete Rouse at 3 p.m., and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council Heather Higginbottom at 6:30 p.m. On the 13th, Kaiser met with Deputy Director of the National Economic Council Jason Furman at 9 a.m.

Other Solyndra officials that made the trek over to the White House include Chairman and Founder Christian Gronet on September 22, 2009, at 9:30 a.m.; and Board Members Thomas Baruch and David Prend.

Baruch went to the White House May 7, 2010, and September 20, 2010, at 8:40 a.m. and 1 p.m., respectively. Prend visited on September 21, 2010, at 9:15 p.m. (RELATED: Bankrupt solar company with Fed backing has cozy ties to Obama administration)

The visitor logs also show that a number of members of the administration a loan guarantee for Solyndra pressing enough to take meetings. Former Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and Adviser Valerie Jarrett even took meetings with Kaiser.
As TheDC previously reported, Solyndra officials, including Kaiser himself, donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Barack Obama.

Kaiser personally donated $53,500 to Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. Ben Bierman, executive vice president of operations donated $5,500 to Obama, and Karen Alter, senior vice president of marketing gave $23,000, just to name a few.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/08/so...#ixzz1XNevmMU4

A $38.6 billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would create or save 65,000 jobs has created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records show.

The program — designed to jump-start the nation’s clean technology industry by giving energy companies access to low-cost, government-backed loans — has directly created 3,545 new, permanent jobs after giving out almost half the allocated amount, according to Energy Department tallies.

The Obama Administration spent nearly half of the $38.6 billion ($17.2 billion) set aside for his green energy programs and was only able to create 3,545 permanent green jobs.

This comes out to a staggering $4,853,000 per job.

At the time, the Energy Department was trying to pump taxpayer money into the California company to save it from imminent failure. The firm had received a $535 million federal loan from the agency in 2009, but early this year confided to the Obama administration that without a rapid infusion of cash it was in danger of defaulting.

“The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad,” the Office of Management and Budget staff member wrote Jan. 31 in an e-mail to a co-worker. “If Solyndra defaults down the road, the optics will be arguably worse later than they would be today. . . . In addition, the timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up.”

The e-mail suggests that, as the Energy Department pushed to release an additional $67 million in installments of the loan to Solyndra, the OMB was not participating in the decision about whether to help the company. OMB staff had been in charge of assessing the default risk of firms that received Energy Department loan guarantees.

Sept 20 (Reuters) - Solyndra LLC's chief executive and chief financial officer will invoke their Fifth Amendment rights and decline to answer any questions put to them at a Congressional hearing on Friday, according to letters from their attorneys obtained by Reuters.
In the letters sent to the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, attorneys for Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison and CFO W. G. Stover said they advised their clients not to provide testimony during the hearings.

The bankrupt company's $535 million federal loan guarantee is being investigated by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Harrison is represented by Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and Stover is represented by Keker & Van Nest.

Solyndra's offices were raided by the FBI two days after the company filed for bankruptcy, although the FBI did not say what prompted the raid. (Reporting by Nichola Groom in Los Angeles, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)