So now it turns out that the Obama White House was warned privately in no uncertain terms last January against a fresh infusion of taxpayer cash to financially beleaguered Solyndra.

Indeed, according to newly released e-mails, a top career official at the Office of Management and Budget warned that the rapidy deteriorating Solyndra situation could damage the president politically.

But the solar-paneling company — a centerpiece of President Obama’s “green jobs” initiative — pleaded that it was in danger of collapsing without new capital.

So the money went through — and Solyndra went belly-up two weeks ago, after burning through $535 million in taxpayer-funded loan guarantees.

A few days later, the FBI raided its offices, seizing files and documents.

Incredibly, OMB staffers had estimated that keeping Solyndra alive but struggling — as the administration did — instead of allowing it to liquidate last January would cost taxpayers an extra $168 million.

“If Solyndra defaults down the road,” read one e-mail, “the optics will arguably be worse than they would be today,” because “additional funds [will] have been put at risk, recovery may be lower and questions will be asked as to why the administration made a bad investment, not just once … but twice.”

The staffer, whose name was redacted from the published e-mail, tried to derail the extra Solyndra cash by making a political argument, suggesting that allowing Solyndra to shut its doors last January would let the White House “get some credit for fiscal discipline.”

But that suggestion was ignored — little surprise, given how the Solyndra deal, now threatening to become Obama’s Enron, was steeped in politics from the start.

One of the California firm’s chief investors, after all, was billionaire George Kaiser, one of Obama’s top 2008 campaign fund-raising bundlers, who’s visited the White House 16 times.

In the months before Solyndra’s approval, ABC News reports, he had meetings with key adviser Valerie Jarrett, then-chief White House economist Austan Goolsbee and former chief of staff Pete Rouse.

All of which may help explain why Team Obama rushed through loan guarantees for Solyndra that had already been shelved by the Bush administration.

The steady drip of new disclosures suggests pretty strongly that what we’ve heard so far about Solyndra — outrageous as it is — is only the tip of the iceberg. See below.