The White House pushed back today against a subpoena issued by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, blasting Republicans for allowing their Solyndra probe to be "driven more by partisan politics" than a real desire to conduct "responsible oversight."

In her letter today, White House legal counsel Kathryn Ruemmler called the subpoena -- which was issued yesterday after a party-line vote by the panel's investigations subcommittee -- "overbroad," "unprecedented" and "unnecessary."

SPECIAL REPORT

Solyndra, a solar manufacturer that was given a $535 million loan guarantee and touted by the White House as a model for the clean energy economy, has filed for bankruptcy. E&E examines how it got there and what it means. Click here to read the report.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration sought to head off yesterday's subpoena vote by dropping some 20,000 pages of new documents on the committee. That document dump included hundreds of pages of White House emails that reference the bankrupt solar energy company, which received over half-a-billion dollars in Department of Energy loan guarantee funding.

Ruemmler chided House Republicans for not doing more to work with the White House to narrow the focus of their subpoena. The subpoena encompasses all communications within the White House from the beginning of the Obama administration that refer or relate to Solyndra. Ruemmler said such a request would, for example, require the White House to produce thousands of pages of news clips that would serve no purpose for Congress.

"Responding to such an expansive request would require the devotion of substantial resources to gather and review many documents that are of no legitimate oversight interest -- which is itself an unreasonable burden on the President's ability to meet his constitutional duties," she wrote.

Ruemmler also said Republicans are encroaching on "longstanding and important Executive Branch confidentiality interests." But she fell short of asserting a claim of executive privilege, something committee Republicans have dared her to do.

Also this afternoon, a spokesman for Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), who is leading the committee investigation into Solyndra, clarified comments the congressman made last night regarding an upcoming meeting between committee investigators and DOE Loan Programs Office chief counsel Susan Richardson.

Stearns said in an interview last night the committee planned to bring Richardson in for a deposition before committee counsel (E&E Daily, Nov. 4).

DOE has offered to make Richardson available to testify at a hearing or to answer questions that committee staff may have, but it has so far resisted sending her to Capitol Hill for a formal closed-door deposition.

Stearns spokesman Paul Flusche said this afternoon the lawmaker "meant to say interviewed instead of deposed last night. The committee is continuing to interview DOE officials as part of this investigation."

DOE spokesman Damien LaVera reiterated this afternoon that no department official is being deposed.

"As part of our effort to cooperate with the committee's investigation, the department has agreed to make Susan Richardson and other department officials available for voluntary interviews with committee staff," LaVera said.

"Ms. Richardson has briefed the committee staff on at least four previous occasions. All told, the department has now provided the committee with more than 80,000 pages of documents, participated in a full committee hearing, scheduled a hearing with Secretary Chu and made more than half a dozen department officials available for briefings with committee staff beginning as early as March.

"Despite all the allegations and insinuations, the record shows that the decisions related to this loan we made on the merits after extensive review by the loan program."