Has Romney Already Blown The Trustworthy Thing?

Mitt says he is not responsible for Bain's deprecations after he left in 1999. But he was still CEO, President, Chairman & sole shareholder thru 2002

This has been a bad week for Romney in terms of getting his message out. Instead of the media focusing on the economy, the discussion was all about Romney's relationship to Bain again-- and, even worse (for him), the character issue. How serious were a series of carefully crafted lies about when he left Bain and how much control he had over companies that were outsourcing American jobs to China? If David Corn's blockbuster in Mother Jones seeps into the mainstream media, it's going to further damage Romney's ability to build any kind of trust among independent voters. He'll be fine with the GOP base but he'll find it increasingly difficult to appeal to voters who aren't already... well, like this.

Last month, Mitt Romney's campaign got into a dustup with the Washington Post after the newspaper reported that Bain Capital, the private equity firm the GOP presidential candidate founded, invested in several US companies that outsourced jobs to China and India. The campaign indignantly demanded a retraction, claiming that these businesses did not send jobs overseas while Romney was running Bain, and the Post stood by its investigation. Yet there is another aspect to the Romney-as-outsourcer controversy. According to government documents reviewed by Mother Jones, Romney, when he was in charge of Bain, invested heavily in a Chinese manufacturing company that depended on US outsourcing for its profits-- and that explicitly stated that such outsourcing was crucial to its success.

This previously unreported deal runs counter to Romney's tough talk on the campaign trail regarding China. "We will not let China continue to steal jobs from the United States of America," Romney declared in February. But with this investment, Romney sought to make money off a foreign company that banked on American firms outsourcing manufacturing overseas.

Republicans in Mississippi, Texas and Alabama might not care about this, but voters in swing states like Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan and Pennsylvania will... a lot. Voters are left with the impression he lied about being with Bain, lied about his taxes, lied about stashing money overseas, lied about sending American manufacturing jobs to China, lied on filings to the SEC... It would be hard to have been conscious this week and to have not gotten a possibly enduring impression that Romney is a liar and that his word can't be trusted. And questions about Bain is all reporters want to ask him now-- which will drive Romney further and further from the mainstream media and into the arms of Fox and Hate Talk Radio GOP propagandists-- again, appealing solely to the already demented and delusional Republican Party base. But normal people want to know why he hasn't released his tax reports and when he will. Even Republicans are starting to ask him to release his taxes. He can't though; there's too much unsavoury stuff in them that disqualify him from running for office. His secret bank accounted and stashed wealthy in Switzerland, the Caymans, Bermuda and Luxembourg are going to haunt him right up through November. Voters-- not countering Republicans in the South-- aren't morons. How hard is it to figure out that if the maximum you can put in an IRA is $4,000/ a year, you can't have IRAs sheltering a hundred million dollars the way Romney does. That kind of math won't work outside of Mississippi. No one likes a tax evader-- especially not a tax evader who's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And another thing that's not going away is the outsourcing of jobs to China and his relationship to the immense sums of tainted Chinese money flooding into his campaign via Sheldon Adelson, his now #1 financial backer-- an organized crime figure in both the U.S. and China.

Layers of opportunistic and contradictory lies have caught up with him and he's stuck in a quicksand-like quagmire of his own making. His own staffers and surrogates are at a loss for how to explain him now.

The Romney campaign repeatedly declined to say Thursday evening whether the Republican presidential candidate attended any meetings or had any contact with Bain Capital during the time he ran the Olympic Games.

Mitt Romney’s relationship with Bain has become a flashpoint in the presidential race as Democrats seek to tie him to corporate decisions made after 1999, when he took a leave from the private equity company to administer the Salt Lake City games until their completion in early 2002. The Boston Globe and other outlets reported this week that SEC documents show Romney was listed as a top executive until 2002.

Romney’s spokespeople have denied that he had any management role in the company during the time he was involved with the games, despite maintaining legal and financial connections to Bain. They say the title listed in SEC filings was an in-name-only position Romney maintained while on leave.



The former Massachusetts governor, however, has previously acknowledged that he remained active in the corporate arena while heading the Salt Lake City games. In a June 17, 2002, appearance before the Massachusetts State Law Ballot Commission, Romney said that during his Utah-based Olympics service, there were “were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth.”

How much time Romney did or didn’t spend in Massachusetts in the years prior to 2002 became an issue when he ran for governor due to questions about his state residency.

Romney testified about his residency after Democrats challenged his eligibility to run in Massachusetts after having been based out of state. The election panel signed off on his candidacy.

Romney didn’t mention Bain Capital in his testimony as one of the companies with which he continued to work while leading the Olympic committee. Asked whether Romney attended any meetings or participated in any phone calls for Bain-- as he did for other firms-- a Romney spokeswoman reiterated that the candidate didn’t have an “active role” in the company during that time.

“As we’ve said countless times, since Feb. 11, 1999, Gov. Romney has not had any active role with Bain Capital,” Romney press secretary Andrea Saul said.

Earlier Thursday, the campaign released a statement from former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu mocking the idea that Romney could have been engaged with the Olympics and Bain at the same time.

“The Obama campaign must think Mitt Romney is Superman. He was, in reality, rescuing the Olympics by working in Utah 24/7 for the years the Obama campaign also alleges he was running Bain Capital,” Sununu said. “Even though the Obama campaign may be wrong about his involvement in Bain Capital, it shows that even they can admit Mitt Romney is a great leader.”

Romney told the Massachusetts election panel in 2002 that he remained active in a number of companies while in Utah, including Marriott and Staples, the office supply giant he helped create through investments from Bain.

During his ballot commission testimony, when asked whether he continued to serve on boards while working on the Olympics, Romney answered: “Yes.”

“I immediately resigned from the board of Sports Authority located in Florida, feeling it could present a conflict of interest with my Olympic responsibilities and of course the travel could be challenging as well. I remained on the board of the Staples Corporation and Marriott International, the Life Like Corporation. And I remained as a corporator of the Belmont Hill School,” he said.

Asked specifically about the Staples board, Romney said there were four to five meetings a year and he returned to Massachusetts “for most of those meetings. Others I attended by telephone if I could not return.”

People are starting to wonder if Romney committed any criminal activities in all his phony filings and concerted efforts to skirt the laws mere mortals have to live by. Lede's like this in papers all across the country aren't going to help him focus people on Obama's role in a struggling economy:

Newly-uncovered public record documents are putting Mitt Romney under the microscope again that not only question his credibility but could find him in legal trouble.

Hopefully, tomorrow's edition of Up With Chris Hayes!, which will feature an interview with a former Bain partner, will be able to answer the question once and for all about Romney's role in the company after he falsely claimed he had left in 1999.