Solar Corp Gave Biden $1.5M, It Got $10B

Quid pro quo isn’t a scandal in politics, it is politics. And no politics is…

The Washington Standard

Quid pro quo isn’t a scandal in politics, it is politics.

And no politics is dirtier than the politics around ‘clean energy’ which is full of the wrong kind of green.

Executives, officials and major investors in First Solar, the largest domestic maker of solar panels, donated at least $2 million to Democrats in 2020, including $1.5 million to Biden’s successful bid for the White House. After he won, the company spent $2.8 million more lobbying his administration and Congress, records show — an effort that included high-level meetings with top administration officials…

First Solar became perhaps the biggest beneficiary of an estimated $1 trillion in environmental spending enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act, a major piece of legislation Biden signed into law in 2022 after it cleared Congress solely with Democratic votes.

Since then, First Solar’s stock price has doubled and its profits have soared thanks to new federal subsidies that could be worth as much as $10 billion over a decade. The success has also delivered a massive windfall to a small group of Democratic donors who invested heavily in the company.

First Solar’s top lobbyist, Samantha Sloan, offered a revealing glimpse of the company’s reach after a bill signing celebration.

“Those of us who’ve worked on this know that none of this would have been possible without the dedication and collaboration of a group of Congressional staffers who worked long hours” to ensure that the law would “deliver as intended,” she posted on LinkedIn alongside a photo of herself beaming on the White House South Lawn.

When the Biden administration started writing rules to implement the Democrats’ new law, First Solar executives and lobbyists met at least four times in late 2022 and 2023 with administration officials, including John Podesta, who oversaw the measure’s environmental provisions. One of the more intimate gatherings was attended by Podesta, Widmar and Sloan, as well as First Solar’s contract lobbyist, Claudia James, an old friend of Podesta’s who worked for decades at a lobbying firm run by Podesta’s brother, Tony, records show…