Appearing Friday afternoon on Fox News, Michele Bachmann made a striking accusation against the Obama administration, presenting a severe conspiracy surrounding the government’s involvement in the failed Solyndra solar power company.
“It just stinks on every level. This makes Watergate look like child’s play,” Bachmann declared — referring to the vast criminal network that had been operated out of the Nixon White House and re-election campaign.
During the interview, Bachmann incorrectly referred multiple times to the government making “loans” to Solyndra, when in fact the government made loan guarantees — a financial arrangement in which a company receives loans from conventional banks, with the government stepping in to repay the loans if the company is unable to do so.
During a House committee hearing this week, Energy Secretary Steven Chu hit back at accusations of political involvement in the transactions, saying that the career civil service had been a driving force in the decisions.
At the start of the interview, Megyn Kelly referred to how during an appearance Thursday night on Greta Van Susteren’s show, Bachmann referred to the Solyndra deal as “gangster government.” Kelly then presented the other side’s argument, for Bachmann’s response.
“The defenders of the administration have said many times on the broadcast that, look — Simon Rosenberg said yesterday, they made 38 investments. Thirty-six went well, two didn’t — one happened to be Solyndra. That’s not ‘gangster government,’ that’s a pretty good win-loss ratio. Your response to that?”
“Well, government has no business, Greta (sic) being a venture capitalist in the first place,” Bachmann responded — perhaps confused for a second as to which show she was on, but later recovering from the error. “This is ridiculous. Government shouldn’t be out picking winners and losers in the private sector. Businesses have to make it, or not make it, on their own.
“This is really a pass-through entity for the President to be able to pay off his political donors. This is more than just a simple Washington scandal — this is a historic scandal. Because the President had his own political fundraiser placed in the Department of Energy for the specific purpose of pointing to which loans would benefit his political donors.
“Not only that, this company never showed a profit — no bank would have ever given this company a loan in the first place. And when they gave this company a loan, and the company looked like they were going downhill, then we saw that the government changed the order of priority over who would get paid back in the case of a bankruptcy. And lo and behold, who would get paid back? It was George Kaiser, and the Kaiser people who were the political donors of President Obama. They would be first in line, which is a violation of the law — the federal government is supposed to be placed back. Also, one of the spouses of one of the people involved, was working for a law firm for Solyndra when they were looking at the deals.
“It just stinks on every level. This makes Watergate look like child’s play, Megyn, and this is something where the White House has to answer questions. There’s e-mails from the White House, they have to be involved.”
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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