Democratic mega-donor Pat Stryker's name appears in White House visitor logs at key points in the Abound Solar loan process. A review of White House visitor logs when compared to the timeline for approval of the $400 million taxpayer-backed loan to the now-bankrupt company yields some interesting overlaps, raising questions worth investigating outside of an anonymous blog.
The one caveat is that a "Pat Stryker" appears in the logs, but the White House and the Fort Collins billionaire heiress have yet to publicly confirm that she is the Pat Stryker in question. We assume there are not a lot of "Pat Strykers" out there capable of getting three White House meetings on the schedule in a year.
Democratic donor Pat Stryker has had an outsized role in Abound Solar. Her Bohemian Companies was a large private investor in the company.
Abound, like Stryker, has also had a great deal of Democratic politician ties. The company ran advertising "thanking" then-Congresswoman Betsy Markey for voting for the Cap and Trade bill. Former Governor Bill Ritter personally hand delivered two letters of support for the company directly to Obama's Energy Secretary, Steven Chu. After Ritter left office, Stryker's Bohemian Companies helped bankroll a $300,000 a year salary for Ritter at CSU focused on renewable energy.
Additionally, Stryker donated $50,000 to Obama's inauguration, and raised another $87,500 for the same. Her tight political connections — including funding millions in liberal attack groups and other Democrat political infrastructure in Colorado — leads many observers to wonder about her role in helping secure the $400 million loan from the Obama administration.
When you compare White House visitor logs to key points in the Abound Solar loan approval process, something even sketchier emerges.
A "Pat Stryker" first appears in the White House logs in October 2009, meeting with a staff member in Operations. Nine months later, on July 3, President Obama personally announced the $400 million loan to Abound.
Only a day after Obama announced the loan to Abound, on July 4, a "Pat Stryker" shows up in White House visitor logs.
The overlap continues with the approval of the loan. Abound announced on December 14, 2010 that the Department of Energy had officially approved their loan application. Then four days later, on December 18, a "Pat Stryker" again shows up in White House visitor logs.
What is going on here? It would seem the key dates in Abound Solar's campaign to get a government loan match up a little too closely to a mega donor for the Democrats and Obama setting meetings at the White House.
The Sunlight Foundation last year tried to figure this out, but was rebuffed by the White House, who refused to answer any questions about the meetings. The only thing a White House spokesman did say was that the July and December meetings appear to be missed appointments, since no check in time was listed on the records.
The question we have is: Did a Pat Stryker have meetings on those dates? If so, is it the same Pat Stryker who has donated millions to get Democrats elected? And if that is true, how can that not be seen as a lobbying campaign to use political connections to get nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer loans?
(Photo Credit: NREL)
Trackbacks/Pingbacks