(CNSNews.com) — Less than three months after President Barack Obama’s May 26, 2010 visit to the Solyndra plant in Fremont, Calif., a Solyndra investor alleged in an e-mail to the company’s new CEO that during Obama’s visit he had personally witnessed the president “actually promise” the company’s previous CEO that he would “look into” having the federal government buy Solyndra’s solar panels to place on federal buildings.
A month and a half after Obama’s visit to Solyndra, internal government emails show, an Energy Department official sought to arrange a meeting between the government’s procurement agency the Solyndra CEO to whom Obama had talked.
“When Obama visited Solyndra in June, 2010, Chris Gronet spoke very openly to Obama about the need for installation of Solynra’s rooftop solar on U.S. government buildings,” the investor, whose name was redacted, said in an Aug. 10, 2010 email to Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison and Steve Mitchell, managing director of Argonaut Private Equity, which was Solyndra’s largest private investor.
“I heard Obama actually promise Chris [Gronet] that he would look into it when he returned to Washington.” wrote the investor in the e-mail. “The point is that the government has to pay for energy no matter what. The capital funding to deploy a lot of rooftop solar on government buildings (say $300 million) just falls off the table in Washington anyway.”