House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa accused the Obama administration this morning of trying to block his committee's efforts to collect evidence ahead of today's hearing on the latest recipient of a Department of Energy loan guarantee to declare bankruptcy.

The California Republican said DOE's actions in the six days since his panel requested documents sent from the personal email account of a former department employee are one of the most concerning aspects of the downfall of Colorado-based Abound Solar, which burned though about $70 million of its federal loan funding before going out of business this month.

Issa said the "loan scandal" that began last fall in the wake of the bankruptcy of California solar manufacturer Solyndra will go on, but "this hearing today is on freedom of information. ... The imperial presidency must end."

But after noting that about 2,000 requested documents had been turned over to the committee, government spending subcommittee ranking member Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) questioned whether Republicans were more interested in playing politics than conducting legitimate oversight.

"At what point do we get to the deliverables of a big scandal here?" Kucinich asked. "I don't see the scandal."

In the course of their wide-ranging investigation into the loan program, Issa and government spending subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) discovered that Jonathan Silver, the former head of DOE's loan program, had often used his personal email account to conduct official business.

Jordan and Issa have questioned whether Silver, who left DOE last fall after Solyndra's downfall, took that step to hide overtly political decisions from federal archiving systems and federal record-keeping laws.

Silver said he hadn't intended to hide anything. Though he said he wished he had handled those documents differently, Silver testified that the use of his personal email account was aimed at expediting his work during frequent business trips.

On Thursday, Issa and Jordan sent a letter to Silver requesting all emails from his personal account relating to the loan program. In that letter, the congressmen said Silver's use of a nonofficial email account to conduct government business could violate the Federal Records Act.

According to a timeline released today by Republican committee staff, Silver's attorney responded to the committee Monday, saying DOE had stepped in to claim that Silver's personal account emails are agency property. The timeline noted that DOE sought to be the conduit by which Silver's personal emails would be transferred to the committee.

Jordan said today he believed DOE intended to redact some of Silver's personal emails before sending them to the committee.

A Democratic committee staffer said there's no indication DOE intended to take that step.

Republicans informed Silver's attorney that DOE had no legal claim over material from his client's personal email account. The committee also threatened to take additional legal steps if those emails were not delivered.

According to the timeline, Silver's attorney began to comply with Issa and Jordan's request yesterday, even as DOE reached out to the committee to reiterate its claim that the emails represent agency property.

Oversight ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) called the outrage that Republicans expressed today over Silver's emails an "alleged conspiracy in search of the facts."

But in his opening statement, Issa accused Democrats of looking the other way.

"When are you going to say shame on your administration for trying to block our legitimate discovery?" he asked.