Top Solyndra executives are scheduled to appear today before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. But that’s all they’ll be doing. As reported earlier this week, Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison and CFO Bill Stover will invoke their Fifth Amendment rights and decline to answer any questions from lawmakers with respect to the $535 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan the company received before going bankrupt.

Here are a few of the questions that Harrison and Stover won’t be answering tomorrow:

1) Why did your company feel it was necessary to build an entirely new production facility, in an area notorious for its abundance of unused commercial real estate? Once the decision was made with respect to the need for a new facility, why did Solyndra choose the location that it did? During the loan-approval process, did anyone at the Department of Energy ever question these decisions?

Subcommittee member Brian Bilbray (R., Calif.) called it “absurd” that no one appears to have raised any concern about the decision to build a brand-new production facility. As a native Californian, Bilbray knows all too well that the business environment in the state has engendered a surplus of abandoned warehouses, any of which could be rented or retrofitted to accommodate Solyndra’s operation. Start-up businesses are constantly failing, and others are “fleeing the state” in search of more favorable economic conditions, Bilbray says.

Which raises another point about the location of the facility. Electricity costs in California, at 22 cents per kilowatt-hour, are twice as high as those in midwestern states such as Ohio. On top of that, the state has some of the strictest state and local regulatory regimes in the country in regard to air quality, water quality, storm runoff, occupational safety, hazardous-waste generation, and so on. And yet Solyndra proposed to build on 30 acres of virgin farmland in Fremont, Calif. (in the Bay area), on a site that was classified by the EPA as a “non-attainment zone,” meaning that air quality did not meet certain federal standards and local authorities needed to implement a plan to reduce pollution. All told, they chose one of the most expensive tracts of land in the country on which to build. Given the involvement of federal funds, the public deserves an explanation for that decision.

2) Solyndra officials visited the White House 20 times between March 2009 and April 2011. What was the purpose of these visits, what was discussed, and who was in attendance? Can you describe the role of George Kaiser, a major Obama fundraiser and Solyndra investor, in arranging these White House meetings?

Kaiser, a billionaire investor from Oklahoma who has openly boasted about his ability to use his Beltway connections to get his hands on federal funding, insists he did not participate in any discussions in regard to the Solyndra loan agreement. This is highly suspect. Kaiser’s foundation, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, through one of its investments arms, Argonaut Ventures, was a primary investor in the company, at one point owning a 39 percent stake. Kaiser made multiple visits to the White House in the months before the loan guarantee was formally approved, and records show he was involved in arranging a number of meetings between Solyndra executives and top administration officials.

Representative Bilbray (R., Calif.) told me he would like to know to what extent Solyndra officials made a “hard sell” to the White House regarding the “environmental benefits” of the thin-film solar-panel technology they were producing, which from an economic standpoint happens to be one of the riskiest investments of its kind. Bilbray fears the administration’s “blind faith in all things solar” caused to it make poor investment decisions.

3) Did you mislead Congress and the DOE about the extent of your financial troubles? Did the White House know the truth?

In a letter to the committee on July 13, Harrison boasted that Solyndra was “currently on track to meet the job-creation commitments agreed upon with the DOE” and cited the company as “an example of a U.S. company using American innovation and ingenuity to complete in the global solar market.”

He reported that Solyndra’s revenues grew from $6 million in 2008 to $140 million in 2010, and predicted that revenues would nearly double in 2011. Six weeks later, the company filed for bankruptcy. Was Harrison telling the truth? And if so, what changed in those six weeks that so dramatically altered Solyndra’s supposedly stellar prospects?

4) Did you, as some of your former employees have suggested, spend money irresponsibly after receiving the $535 million loan guarantee?

Lindsey Eastburn, a former Solyndra engineer, told the Washington Post that after the loan guarantee came through, the company started “spending money left and right” on flashy conference rooms and state-of-the-art equipment that was never used. Records also show that within a week of receiving the initial loan guarantee, Solyndra sought another $400 million loan guarantee that was never approved. What, exactly, were they planning to do with all that extra money?

Harrison previously told the Post that he focused solely on business, as opposed to “the political aspect of what happens in Washington.” However, public records show that Solyndra has given more than $1 million to Beltway lobbyists since 2008. What did that money buy them?

5) What has changed since Sept. 10, 2011, when Mr. Harrison’s counsel told committee staff he was willing to testify and answer questions at this hearing?

Harrison and Stover were originally invited to testify at last week’s committee hearing, but asked for more time. An e-mail to committee staff reveals that Harrison had agreed to testify and answer questions if the hearing could be pushed back, but apparently he had a change of heart. As top Republicans on the committee wrote in response: “Who exactly are Solyndra’s executives trying to protect and what are they trying to hide?”

6) The loan-restructuring agreement negotiated in February 2011 gave Solyndra’s private investors priority over taxpayers with respect to the first $75 million recovered in the event of Solyndra’s collapse, potentially in violation of federal statute. Who at DOE was responsible for this decision? And as the recipient of a taxpayer-guaranteed loan, how can you justify this arrangement?

In 2010, when Solyndra’s financial situation had become too dire to ignore, the company entered negotiations with the DOE and two major private investors to restructure the terms of the loan guarantee. DOE claimed that the restructuring agreement positioned the DOE (i.e., the U.S. taxpayer) for “maximum recovery.” But that wasn’t the case. Documents obtained by committee staff reveal that DOE attempted to “restructure the loan to create a situation whereby investors felt there was a value in their investment.” To that end, private investors were given priority recovery status over the government.

Committee Republicans argue, quite convincingly, that this decision by DOE was in violation of federal statute. According to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which created the DOE loan program, the government’s loans “shall be subject to the condition that the obligation is not subordinate to other financing.”

7) In a recent statement, Solyndra spokesman David Miller appeared to blame the company’s failure on the DOE’s refusal to accept the terms of a second restructuring agreement. What were the terms of that agreement? And what reason did the DOE give for rejecting them?

Fortunately, DOE finally came to its senses and opted not to shell out any more money to the failing company. But it appears that Solyndra asked for it, and its top private investors, including a firm tied to Kaiser, were willing to go along.

“As late as August, the company believed that existing investors and the DOE would come to a financing arrangement that would have secured the capital the company needed to achieve positive cash flow from operations,” Miller wrote in a statement earlier this week. “The Company’s investors had offered a transaction pursuant to which the required capital would have been invested, however, the terms of such transaction were not acceptable to the DOE.”

When DOE did not approve the terms of the agreement, Miller said, bankruptcy was the only option.

— Andrew Stiles is the Franklin Center’s 2011 Thomas L. Rhodes Journalism Fellow.