'White House allowed donors to feed at green energy trough'

Obama Official Was Like “A Hooker Dropped Into A Prison Exercise Yard”

Emails show an investor's ties to White House officials Valerie Jarrett and Jim Messina. With Romney taking fire, the RNC shoots back with allegations that the White House allowed donors to feed at the green energy trough.

Michael Hastings
BuzzFeed Staff



Posted Jul 17, 2012 10:44pm EDT

The Republican National Committee is continuing its counterattack on President Barack Obama, releasing emails and videos to bolster Romney's recent claims that the White House's efforts to invest in "green energy" amounted to a form of "crony capitalism."

In one email, Steve Westly, an Obama fundraiser whose company received close to a half billion dollars in green energy funds in 2009, cites his ties to senior Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, campaign manager Jim Messina, and secretary of energy Steven Chu.

"Please forgive the delay on this, but the Administration has asked me to co-host events for Valeria[sic] Jarrett (last Thursday) and Jim Messina and Steven Chu (both of which are tomorrow) so things have been a bit busy on this end," he wrote to an Obama energy official in an email on March 8, 2010.

(The email exchanges can be found here.)

Westly sent the email during his vetting process to sit on the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, a position he still holds, according to his online bio at the Westly Group.

The appointment was announced about one year after Westly's companies received the energy funds.

Other information in the emails regarding possible conflicts of interest have been redacted.

Westly's connections were first questioned last year in a joint investigation between the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News, which listed several other Obama donors whose companies received money from the program.

Another video, unearthed by the RNC — which is seeking to blunt a searing Democratic attack on Republican Mitt Romney's time at the help of Bain Capital — offers a sense of how venture capitalists who supported Obama viewed the green money.

In a video appearance from 2009, venture capitalist Paul Holland — who had given the maximum legal contribution to Obama, and whose companies received over 6 million in government dollars — described his feelings when heard about the billions up for grabs.

"He came in to do his talk and opened his talk with, ‘I’m Matt Rogers I am the Special Assistant to the Secretary of Energy and I have $134 billion that I have to disperse between now and the end of December,’" Holland told the audience. "So upon hearing that I sent an email to my partners that said Matt Rogers is about to get treated like a hooker dropped into a prison exercise yard."

Holland continued: "And I had the lack of judgment to go up and share that with him and the other people who were all standing around him...Fortunately for me they all laughed and thought it was funny.”

The administration has consistently denied charges of impropriety with the energy funds, while the Obama campaign has suggested it's Romney's attempts to change the story line from his business record at Bain Capital, and his refusal to release more than two years worth of tax returns.