RANGEfire! | Biden DOJ tries to cover up massive Obama era solar energy scandal

Exclusive — Crescent Dunes: Biden DOJ Moved on Election Night to Cover Up Alleged Solar Energy Scandal that Cost Taxpayers Hundreds of Millions

Matthew Boyle

Breitbart

Outgoing President Joe Biden’s Justice Department moved on election night on Nov. 5 to essentially ensure the cover-up of a potentially massive green energy scandal, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.

This story has tentacles back through, not just the Biden administration, but all the way back to the Obama administration, and it could be something that jeopardizes the broader green energy agenda and the future of leftist solar projects on federal lands. At least one congresswoman is already formally pressing the DOJ for answers, and more members of Congress are likely to get involved soon. It could even have major implications for the incoming administration’s energy policy.

On Nov. 5, at 5:20 p.m. ET, less than an hour before the first polls closed and when it had become clear from the exit polls that Democrat presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris was likely to lose, an attorney with the Justice Department emailed lawyers for plaintiffs in a qui tam lawsuit aimed at recouping significant losses the taxpayers allegedly incurred from a failed solar plant in Nevada. A qui tam lawsuit is when a private plaintiff sues on behalf of the U.S. Government to recoup taxpayer dollars — often alleging fraud, misuse, or theft of taxpayer dollars.

The email from the DOJ stated what plaintiffs started hearing through the grapevine as the election neared and it became clear the Harris campaign was in trouble. The email said that the DOJ intended to dismiss a lawsuit that it had previously allowed to proceed, thereby undercutting the private push to recoup significant losses for American taxpayers.

“The United States intends to intervene in this case for the purpose of dismissing the qui tam claims under 31 U.S.C. 3730(c)(2)(A),” Anthony Gill, a trial lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division Fraud Section, emailed attorneys for CMB Export, LLC, an EB-5 visa firm that had filed the qui tam lawsuit in question. “The United States has determined that dismissal is commensurate with the public interest and that the matter does not warrant the continued expenditure of government resources. The anticipated discovery and litigation obligations associated with the continued litigation of this case will impose an undue burden on the U.S. Department of the Treasury, U.S. Department of Energy, and U.S. Department of Justice.”

“We intend to file our motion this week,” Gill added in the email, obtained by Breitbart News. “There is not more I can add to the United States’ decision to seek dismissal under 3730(c)(2)(A), but feel free to let us know if you have any questions.”

This decision was shocking to plaintiffs because it represented a major reversal of the position the very same Biden Justice Department had previously taken. The Justice Department had, after years of inexplicable delays, previously declined to intervene in the qui tam suit per a filing on June 1, 2023 — it took the Department years to finally get to this point — and then the case was unsealed finally on Jan. 24, 2024 — eleven months ago — after a battle on that front in court. In laymen’s terms, what the Justice Department formally declining to intervene in a qui tam suit and then the suit getting unsealed by the court means is the plaintiffs in the qui tam suit can proceed with litigation against the defendants.

This story begins back during Obama’s administration, when leftists and environmentalists supercharged a crazed push towards so-called renewable energy sources. The federal government under Obama backed what was called the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project with $737 million in guaranteed loans. The plant was a $1 billion project.

Ostensibly, what Crescent Dunes was building was a 1,600-acre plant in the Nevada desert designed to use mirrors to capture sunlight to heat molten salt in a giant tower to create energy. “The plant was supposed to generate clean energy using more than 10,000 mirrors to heat molten salt in a 640-foot-high tower,” the Las Vegas Review Journal wrote in a 2020 editorial about the project’s failures. “The superheated salt would then boil water, creating steam to produce power. Making this endeavor even more exciting was that salt was supposed to be able to store heat and produce electricity after sunset.”

Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, had talked for years about making the Silver State “the Saudi Arabia of geothermal and solar energy.” This fit the bill. Reid, who has since retired and passed away, now has the Las Vegas airport named after him. While he is gone, the U.S. taxpayer is still allegedly out with what sources familiar with the details of the lawsuit say is more than $200 million, and could be as high as $700 million or even more depending on factors such as depreciation and loan guarantees.

The plant went into bankruptcy in 2020 after years of failing to return any profit, but as of 2021, it was reportedly operating again somewhat under a different ownership structure per a local news report from 8NewsNow in Nevada. That story detailed some of the problems with the technology as well.

“In addition to its struggles to turn a profit, the plant also was criticized because birds were dying in the intense heat produced by the panels. Some reports indicated that birds had burst into flames in mid-flight,” the 8NewsNow report from 2021 from a Las Vegas television station reads. “Another problem surrounded a report that workers were hospitalized after they were exposed to nitrogen dioxide — a gas emitted from the hot salt tank.”

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