Jonathan Silver has had success as a private sector investor. As an investor of the public dime, however, he’s been caught up in failure.
Silver was the head of the Department of Energy office that administered loan guarantees to green-energy manufacturers, including failed solar panel maker Solyndra. Silver came to the department after the original guarantee was issued, but he’s fiercely defended the program, and also worked to subordinate taxpayers to the private investors in Solyndra — increasing the risk taxpayers would take a haircut.
Of course, taxpayers did take a haircut on Solyndra — more than half a billion dollars.
So it’s a bit rich that Silver is now blaming the “Tea Party shenanigans” and a “partisan … witchhunt” for costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
Here are his posts on Twitter:
and then
followed by
and finally
The argument seems to be that the property would have fetched more when sold in 2012 had it not been for Republicans and Tea Partiers making a fuss over losing half a billion in a loan guarantee to a politically connected company.
