Mitt Romney at Bain Capital longer than he admitted, report says
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and wife Ann and their family walk in the Wolfeboro Independence Day parade on July 4, 2012, in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.
The Obama campaign attacked Mitt Romney on Thursday, saying he was CEO of Bain Capital for much longer than he has previously admitted, according to POLITICO.
Obama's campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said the new information proves Romney is “the most secretive candidate… since Nixon.”
Cutter told reporters “At every turn, at every piece of Mitt Romney’s record or credential, whether it’s Bain, whether it’s his own personal finances, whether it’s who is raising money for him or his time in the Statehouse in Massachusetts, there is an enormous cloud over Mitt Romney’s record because of his penchant for secrecy."
President Barack Obama's campaign was responding to a Boston Globe story that revealed Bain Capital's 2002 SEC filings identify Romney as CEO, though he had said he left in 1999. Romney has maintained that he left active management of the firm in 1999 to run the Olympics.
“The article is not accurate,” Romney press secretary Andrea Saul told reporters, including POLITICO. “As Bain Capital has said, as Governor Romney has said, and as has been confirmed by independent fact checkers multiple times, Governor Romney left Bain Capital in February of 1999… and had no input on investments or management of companies after that point.”
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Two questions remain: whether Romney is telling the truth and, as the Washington Post wrote, why it matters.
According to Post's Glenn Kessler "millions of dollars of attack ads by the Obama campaign are hanging in the balance. If Romney left Bain in February 1999, then a number of business deals that went sour (such as KB Toys) can’t be counted as part of Romney’s tenure. If he actually left in 2002, as the Obama campaign alleges, then those deals are fair game."
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Meanwhile, Romney and the Republican National Committee continue to raise record amounts of money. Combined they raised $106 million in June, which gives them a total of $160 million. In May, Romney raised about $17 million more than Obama.
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