As expected, Solyndra’s CEO and CFO both refused to answer questions during a House Energy and Commerce oversight inquiry today, invoking their Fifth Amendment right over 20 times:

Over and over again, Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison and chief financial officer W.G. Stover responded to questions with some formulation of the following statement: “On the advice of my counsel, I invoke the privilege afforded to me by the Fifth Amendment of the U.S Constitution. I respectfully decline to answer questions.”

All of the questions came from Republicans on the committee, who pressed the executives on topics from whether their financial statements were accurate to whether they met with Obama officials.

They’re worried about incriminating themselves in the current FBI investigation into Solyndra, which is fine. But as much as the executives have the right to remain silent, everyone else has the right to point out doing so makes them look like they have a lot to hide. Republicans tried to hit this point home by repeatedly peppering the executives with questions they refused to answer. This soon wore out the nerves of top Democrat on the committee Rep. Henry Waxman:

The repeated questions drew an objection from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who slammed Republicans for persisting even after knowing that the executives would invoke their right to remain silent.

“I just want to take this moment to assert the fact that I think it’s unseemly and inappropriate for members to be asking questions that you know they will not answer,” Waxman said, saying the GOP questions were “sound bites” for the press.

It seems strange for Waxman to jump to Solyndra’s defense like this. Taking the Fifth during a Senate inquiry seems more “unseemly” than what the Republicans were doing, which was simply asking questions. And it’s not like they were without precedent on this. When Kenneth Lay invoked the Fifth Amendment during his Senate testimony on Enron, members of both parties spent hours raking him over the coals. I’d like to hear Waxman explain why that was appropriate, but the Republicans’ actions today weren’t.