When it came to the now-infamous Solyndra loan guarantee, the Treasury Department's input during the approval process appears to have been more of an afterthought than a real check against government waste, according to the agency's top watchdog.

Although the Department of Energy manages the loan program, it was required to consult with Treasury before finalizing any deal under the law that governs the specific loan that Solyndra was granted in early 2009.

But according to an audit released yesterday afternoon by Treasury Assistant Inspector General Marla Freedman, that consultation was compressed into a 26-hour period as DOE pushed Treasury to expedite its efforts so a news release could be issued announcing the Solyndra deal.

The report is sure to add fuel to the fire for critics who argue that the Solyndra deal was based on political considerations by an administration intent on pushing its green energy agenda no matter the risk. Obama administration officials have maintained that decisions were made on the merits by career government employees.

Solyndra, a California solar energy company that received the first loan guarantee issued through a stimulus-act-funded program for renewable energy projects, went bankrupt in August after blowing through $527 million in taxpayer dollars. While the loan was granted and managed by DOE, it was funded through Treasury's Federal Financing Bank.

Despite the brief window they were given to conduct their review of the deal in late March 2009, Treasury officials assured the IG that DOE addressed all their concerns.

"However, Treasury's e-mail correspondence at the time of Solyndra's consultation leave questions as to whether Treasury's concerns were fully addressed," the IG report states.

The IG investigation, which was launched in October, found that Treasury officials raised questions about the price of the project, the amount of equity Solyndra had in the deal, whether the company's product could succeed on the solar market, and even whether DOE had already decided on the terms and conditions of the loan guarantee before coming to Treasury for a consultation.

The IG cited one email in which Treasury officials discussed the issue of equity ratios.

"DOE says that their hands are tied on this Issue," the email stated. "They are under pressure to complete a deal."

The IG report criticizes Treasury for not maintaining documents about DOE's responses to the questions Treasury officials raised. It concludes that a lack of clarity about Treasury's role led to the rushed review process.

"There was no common understanding/definition of what constituted Treasury's consultative role within Treasury or between Treasury and DOE," the report states.

It also found Treasury simply didn't have the policies and procedures in place to perform the type of review the law required.

Capitol Hill hearings on Solyndra have also focused on a controversial decision by DOE in February 2011 to subordinate $75 million of taxpayer money behind cash from private investors in a last-ditch effort to prop up the failing company.

GOP investigators on the House Energy and Commerce Committee -- which has been looking into the Solyndra deal since February 2011 and amassed 187,000 pages of documents from the Obama administration over the course of its investigation -- view the subordination decision as a clear violation of the law governing the program.

Treasury officials who testified last fall before the Energy and Commerce Committee acknowledged that subordinating a government loan is highly unusual and that the department had concerns about the move.

But the new IG report found that Treasury was not consulted on the restructuring effort and that the law is unclear whether DOE was required to seek Treasury's input.

The Treasury investigation is one of several independent probes of the Solyndra deal. The most anticipated one is being conducted by Department of Energy Inspector General Gregory Friedman.

But Friedman has been tight-lipped about the details and timeline for completing that probe, which became public after his office joined FBI officers in a raid on the company's California headquarters in mid-September (Greenwire, Nov. 11, 2011).