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(Image source: The Boston Globe)
BY CHRISTINA HARTMAN
His critics call it a bombshell: A Boston Globe report published Thursday says the GOP’s
presumptive nominee stayed at the private equity firm Bain Capital for three years longer
than he said he did.
As proof, The Globe’s Callum Borchers and Christopher Rowland went through nine SEC
filings after 1999, which list the candidate as the firm’s sole stockholder, CEO, president
and board chairman. 1999, by the way, is when Romney has been saying he left. What’s the
big deal?
The Obama camp has been hitting Romney hard over his tenure at the private equity firm,
releasing ads like this accusing him of so-called “vulture capitalism.”
“They made as much money off it as they could. They closed it down and filed for bankruptcy
without any concern for the families or the communities.”
Connecting the dots: Romney’s camp has been fighting hard against those allegations, arguing
the candidate left the company in 1999 before Bain got involved in closing ailing companies
down. So for some observers, the revelation he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital
as late as 2002 is more than just a clerical error.
Early Wednesday, before the Boston Globe report, the Romney camp released this ad accusing
the president of lying with the Bain attacks.
“Obama’s dishonest campaign. Another reason America has lost confidence in Barack Obama.”
Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul called the Globe report “inaccurate,” saying the
candidate had no operational duties after 1999. The firm itself released a statement
saying essentially the same thing. In fact, The New York Times’ Michael Shear says,
even if the filings are true, they wouldn’t necessarily mean Romney should be on the hook
for the firm’s controversial post-1999 moves.
“No one has come forward to produce notes of meetings attended by Mr. Romney [during
the time in question]. There is no indication of conference calls or partnership meetings
that he participated in.”
But that’s not enough for MSNBC analyst David Corn — who notes The Globe’s investigation
found Romney made at least $100,000 in 2001 and 2002 as a Bain “executive” according
to SEC filings.
“He still benefited from them in terms of profiting from their deals. It’s inconceivable
that for all those years, he wasn’t asking, checking, vetting, having some input.”
But in an interesting piece from the blog Legal Insurrection, Cornell law professor
William Jacobson says, the Globe’s so-called “bombshell” was out there in as long ago
as the 2008 election cycle — in fact — he says — it was part of John McCain’s opposition
research against Romney.
Conservative blog Hot Air expands, “...the information in that file actually came from
a 2002 story in — ta da — the Boston Globe... The Globe’s recycling its own reporting
as a ‘scoop’ in the interest of helping Obama.”
So either Romney stayed on as CEO but had no operational duties as he says or he stayed
on as CEO and was still involved with the company. Again, according to The New York
Times, there’s no evidence YET of the latter.