The largest U.S. producer of solar panels donated $1.5 million to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, reportedly spent $2.8 million lobbying the Biden administration and Congress after Biden was inaugurated, then reaped enormous financial benefits from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which got nary a single Republican vote in Congress, allotted an estimated $1 trillion for environmental spending. Since Biden signed it into law in 2022, Arizona-based First Solar’s stock price has doubled.

“[I]ts profits have soared thanks to new federal subsidies that could be worth as much as $10 billion over a decade,” the Associated Press (AP) reported, adding, “The company will benefit from billions of dollars in lucrative tax credits for domestic clean energy manufacturers.”

After Biden signed the bill, First Solar’s executives and lobbyists “met at least four times in late 2022 and 2023 with administration officials, including John Podesta, who oversaw the measure’s environmental provisions,” the AP noted.

Last December, First Solar sold roughly $650 million of tax credits to a tech company. The company could use tax credits of as much as 16 cents per watt for a solar module.

Canary Media noted:

But because these incentives are essentially discounts on a company’s federal tax bill, their value to a clean energy manufacturer is limited by how much the firm owes in taxes. Plus, it can take several years for the government to send the full tax reimbursements. The Inflation Reduction Act lets companies get around these limitations by enabling them to sell the tax credits they earn on an open market to any company looking to shave down its tax bill. 

Meanwhile, investors in the company who donated huge sums to Biden’s 2020 campaign have been raking in the cash. Farhad Ebrahimi, co-founder of the software company Quark who owns roughly 5% stake in First Solar, donated at least $1 million to Biden’s campaign four years ago. He “was added to Forbes billionaires list in 2023 thanks to the skyrocketing value of his roughly 5% stake in First Solar,” AP noted.

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Lukas T. Walton, of the family that owns Walmart, owned 4.9% of the company; he also donated $360,000 to Biden’s 2020 campaign and $100,000 to Biden’s 2021 inauguration.

In July 2022, the day after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and holdout Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) started secret negotiations to get the stalled Inflation Reduction Act to move toward passage, Democratic megadonor Jim Simons gave $2.5 million to Schumer’s super PAC.

Between that time and September, when Biden signed the bill, a hedge fund created by Simons bought 60,000 shares of First Solar, later upping its investment to 1.5 million shares, then selling them in 2023 after First Solar’s stock price had skyrocketed.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been detained by Russia on bogus espionage charges since March of 2023, but former President Donald Trump is confident that the journalist will be freed immediately if he wins the election in November.

Trump posted about Gershkovich on Wednesday morning as the 32-year-old journalist appeared in a Russian court for the start of his trial. The U.S. government has designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained,” and the WSJ holds that the accusations against its reporter are completely false.

“EVAN GERSHKOVICH, the young Wall Street Journal reporter who is being harshly detained in Russia as his ESPIONAGE TRIAL is about to begin, will be released prior to my taking office if I WIN the Election on NOVEMBER 5th,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Crooked Joe can’t do anything right, although it is likely that he will pay $BILLIONS, which continues a very bad ‘Biden Precedent,’ to get Evan home. I got a record 58 hostages brought home, paying next to nothing. Putin has no respect for Biden – and that’s the way it goes!!! Fear not, Evan, I will get you home soon, and you will be safe while there!!!”

A senior Kremlin official told reporters on Wednesday that the Russian government is still open to a prisoner swap for the U.S. to get Gershkovich back home, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Biden administration previously negotiated a deal for the release of WNBA star Britney Griner from a Russian prison after she was arrested for allegedly entering the country with marijuana vaping materials.

Griner was freed in December 2022 after President Joe Biden agreed to hand over Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is known as the “merchant of death.” The WNBA player had been held in a Russian prison for nearly 10 months.

Gershkovich’s Russian imprisonment passed the one-year mark in March. He was on assignment for the WSJ in Russia when he was arrested by Russia’s Federal Security Service.

The reporter’s family released a statement on Wednesday, saying, “These past 15 months have been extraordinarily painful for Evan and for our family. We miss our son and just want him home. We’re deeply disappointed that he will have to endure further attempts to discredit him.”

Gershkovich’s next hearing is scheduled for August 13, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

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Biden is also facing pressure to secure the release of other Americans, including Marine veteran Paul Whelan, who is being held in a Russian prison; humanitarian Ryan Corbett, who is in the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan; and five American hostages believed to be alive and in Hamas captivity after the terrorist organization’s October 7 attack on Israel.