AFP PHOTO/Nicholas Kamm
The timeline of Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital is increasingly becoming fodder in the presidential campaign, as reports continue to surface suggesting that his involvement with the company extended for as many as three years past his official departure in 1999.
A report out this morning in the Boston Globe chronicles the murky timing in which Romney says he left the private equity firm to rescue the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics of 2002.
Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”
Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.
The Romney campaign wasted no time in firing back, though the candidate himself has not addressed the latest allegations.
"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 to run the Olympics and had no input on investments or management of companies after that point,” campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement.
Bain also issued a new statement today saying "due to the sudden nature of Mr. Romney's departure, he remained the sole stockholder for a time while formal ownership was being documented and transferred to the group of partners who took over management of the firm in 1999. Accordingly, Mr. Romney was reported in various capacities on SEC filings during this period."
However, more and more reports are stacking up against Romney's claims, with as many as four sets of SEC filings showing that Romney's departure from Bain was not as clean-cut as the campaign would like the public to believe.
On top of the questions to the timing of his tenure, Mother Jones Washington bureau chief and MSNBC contributor David Corn Thursday slammed the Romney campaign with another blow on outsourcing, arguing that Romney "was the sole shareholder, sole director, president and CEO" of two Bain-affiliated companies that invested in, and benefited from, offshored jobs in China.
"Mitt Romney, when he was at Bain... he invested millions of dollars into a Chinese firm that was trying to make profits by taking the outsourced jobs in manufaturcing that U.S. companies were shipping to China," Corn told MSNBC's Craig Melvin. "He was trying to make money off of Chinese companies trying to take advantage of U.S. outsourcing."
Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter quickly latched onto both reports, highlighting how Romney was "misrepresenting his position" at Bain, "which is a felony," she told reporters over a conference call.
The increased scrutiny on Romney's business record falls squarely within the Obama campaign's attacks and messaging in TV ads.
"The Obama campaign ads have been shown to be demonstrably false, that’s another way of saying a lie,” Ed Gillespie, senior adviser to the Romney campaign, said Thursday morning on Today.
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The Obama campaign is lying!!!!!!!
VOTE NO Obama 2012!!!!!!
I just heard on NPR that the obama people can not substantiate that.
Ooooops.
Waddyaknow. Proof a dog can be taught to type.
Obama Campaign has disgraced it self even further then i thought possible they are accusing Romney of a felony
this has been laid to rest more times then Obama birth certificate
WaPo and fortune magazine both have written articles about this. which both claim That Romney didn't have any involvement in any of Bains activates after 1999 yes his name did remain on some SEC document because the paperwork and negotiations of his departure wasn't finalized till 2002 this was also conformed by the Mass. election committee
Obama needs to apologize for accusing some one of a felony with no evidence and after many respected agency have claimed Romney did not have any activity with Bain after 1999 and the only reason his name remained on some SEC documents because his departure wasn't finalized till after 2001 which is perfectly legal
hmmmm.....my my my.....Bushes depression is Obama's cause Bush left....oh I see your logic....republicans are never responsible after the fact...........legal or not.....
And just for you righties. They've shown 4 differant documents that say he was a Bain after 1999. But hell, don't let facts stand in your way. Go back to Fox Lies. They'll tell you what to say.
Afternoon hesback.
Do you realize when you sell a car you name remains on the title till the car is fully paid for does that mean that you are responsible if the current driver of that car gets into an accident no its not all it means that you have the right to retake position of the car if payment arent made
This basically what went on with Romney and Bain he left the organization in 1999 and had no activity with any decision of Bain after that there has not been any proof of it because im sure if there was it would have been found
Dickhead-If your name's on the title of the car, IT'S YOURS. You get to pay ALL the tickets.
so basically we agree about Bush. it is his depression and Obama is cleaning it up....ahhh progress....nothing like going forward........
not not only that Chris....if it crashes and your name is on it guess who is liable no matter what state you in....sound familiar.....he's learnin........oh my ribs.....
No he's not. I suggest you get your ribs wrapped in plaster. They must have fractured by now.
yep they get to hurtin when I read the trolls comments. do they ever think on their own.....hahahaha........?
I can tell not one of you every sold a car before your name remains on the titlle as the lean holder till that car is paid for
I've sold 4 cars. I sign the title over when I sell it. I've never had liens on my cars.
But then I'm not white trash.
Obama's people said that either Mitt committed a felony OR he is lying to the public. One or the other, take your pick, but don't just tell half of the story!
Romney is a crook that doesn't want to be exposed.
Obama is insane and he is doing any and everything he can do to get support and attention. A politician that have to do that is not worth being in office. Obama is a liar point blank.
VOTE NO Obama 2012!!!!!
And Mitt Romney is a LIAR,a Cheat, reckless,and racist and everyday that goes by is focus on what your willard did on Bain...There are other strings of documents about what the hell he was doing in that period of time.(.I know..stealing money from the middle class)...All those bain activities were hidden..Many question of your man b113...check the facts bro,,,Pinocchio effect
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/mitt-romney-and-his-departure-from-bain/2012/07/12/gJQAASzUfW_blog.html#pagebreak
VOTE NO Obam 2012!!!!!!
Hey Now! Who you gonna believe? The Romney campaign, or some pesky SEC filing paperwork?
Silly Wabbits! Tricks are for the GOP!
(s/o)
Mitt Romney is just 'crooked as a dog's hind leg'! I feel he mislead the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) when he worked for BAIN Capital and this is illegal!! The timeline and his signature on certain documents just does not add up and I feel he lied to the SEC and now is lying to the American public. Attorney General Eric Holder should hold Mitt Romney accountable for this act and launch a criminal investigation and pursue this to the full extent of the law.
ED your a BIG fat lier!!!!!!!!! WaPo, the Fact Checker, FactCkeck.org and Fortune Magazine all have written article debunking this claim this has also been conformed by the Mass. election Board.That is a flat out lie and fact checks have showed none of this to be true. Funny how you do not hear that on MSNBC. its a crime to call some one a felon without any proof it is called slander.
VOTE NO Obama 2012!!!!!!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/mitt-romney-and-his-departure-from-bain/2012/07/12/gJQAASzUfW_blog.html#pagebreak
Why does it matter when Mitt Romney left Bain Capital?
Millions of dollars of attack ads by the Obama campaign are hanging in the balance. If Romney left Bain in February 1999, when he departed to run the Olympics, 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.
We have looked at this issue before, back in January, and thought we had settled it.
But now the Boston Globe has raised the issue again. The story seems to hinge on a quote from a former Securities and Exchange Commission member, which would have more credibility if the Globe had disclosed she was a regular contributor to Democrats. (Interestingly, “The Real Romney,” a book on the former Massachusetts governor, by Boston Globe reporters, states clearly that he left Bain when he went to run the Olympics and details the turmoil that ensued when he suddenly quit, nearly breaking up the partnership)
We’re considering whether to once again take a deeper look at this, though it really feels like Groundhog Day again. There appears to be some confusion about how partnerships are structured and managed, or what SEC documents mean. (Just because you are listed as an owner of shares does not mean you have a managerial role.)
To accept some of the claims, one would have to believe that Romney, with the advice of his lawyers, lied on government documents and committed a criminal offense. Moreover, you would have to assume he willingly gave up his share to a few years of retirement earnings — potentially worth millions of dollars — so he could say his retirement started in 1999.
UPDATE: Fortune obtained the offering documents for a Bain Capital Fund circulating in June 2000, as well as a fund in 2001. None of the documents show that Romney was listed as being among the “key investment professionals.” As Fortune put it, “the contemporaneous Bain documents show that Romney was indeed telling the truth about no longer having operational input at Bain -- which, one should note, is different from no longer having legal or financial ties to the firm.”
For interested readers, below is a summary of what we, FactCheck.org and Fortune magazine have previously concluded.
The Fact Checker, Jan. 18, 2012
A 2002 statement he filed with the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission on his financial interests lists ownership of various Bain entities, some of which appear to intersect with the funds that invested in KB Toys. The document says that Romney is “a passive, limited partner [with] no management capacity” in many of these funds.
In the Massachusetts document, Romney is also listed as 100 percent owner of “Bain Capital Inc.” But there is less than meets the eye here. Bain Capital Inc. was the management firm, which was paid a management fee to run the funds and actually made virtually no profit, since it existed to pay salaries and expenses. After Romney formally left Bain in 2001, a new entity called “Bain Capital LLC” took over the management function.
By virtually all accounts, Romney was focused on the Olympics in the 1999-2002 period. Yet because Romney had not legally separated from Bain, his name is littered across Securities and Exchange Commission filings concerning Bain Capital deals during this period. The crazy quilt of private-equity structures, in some ways, makes his ownership appear even more ominous, as the filings list hundreds of thousands of shares controlled by Romney.
Even so, it is a real stretch to claim that Romney — himself — “closed” these stores. No evidence has emerged that he was involved in the KB Toys transaction. Indeed, when creditors sued over the dividend payment, they named six Bain-controlled entities and three Bain executives who had served on the board of KB Holdings.
Given that the plaintiffs’ lawyers will try to list as many defendants as possible to try to force a settlement, one can be certain Romney would have been named if there had been any hint of his involvement. But he was not named, despite the SEC filings suggesting his control of the shares.
FactCheck.Org, July 2, 2012
.
If the Obama campaign were correct, Romney would be guilty of a federal felony by certifying on federal financial disclosure forms that he left active management of Bain Capital in February 1999….
And after reviewing evidence cited by the Obama campaign, we reaffirm our conclusion that Romney left the helm of Bain Capital when he took a leave of absence in 1999 to run the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics – as he has said repeatedly — and never returned to active management. The Obama campaign’s recent ads thus mislead when they point to investments made by Bain, as well as management decisions made by companies in which Bain invested, after that time.
What does the Obama campaign have in rebuttal? Very little, and none of it convincing in our judgment.
Much of the Obama campaign’s letter is devoted to quoting portions of documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In summary, the letter states there are “at least 63 filings with that agency after March 1, 1999 that list various Bain entities and describe them as ‘wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.’” That’s true, but not relevant.
We have never disputed that Romney remained the owner of Bain while he was running the Olympics committee. The issue always has been, who was running Bain? Nothing in the SEC documents contradicts what Romney has certified as true.
On that point, the Obama campaign cites snippets of a few news clippings to make a case that Romney was still a part-time manager of Bain after he left to run the Olympics. But a close reading shows these news accounts don’t contradict Romney either.
Fortune Magazine, July 2, 2012
Remember, Romney did not leave Bain Capital as part of a long-term, planned succession process. Instead, his departure was fairly sudden — borne of a desire to help salvage an Olympic Games that was $1.4 billion in the hole and tarred by a massive bribery scandal. The very first reports of Romney being considered for the Salt Lake City job were on Feb. 2, 1999. Just nine days later, he officially took over.
Not surprisingly, Bain Capital hadn’t worked out all the details of Romney’s departure. It eventually would discard the CEO position in favor of a horizontal management committee made up of numerous partners, and provide Romney with a golden parachute that included limited partnership interests in all Bain-related funds raised through 2009 (including the option for Romney to invest additional monies). But none of that was in place when Romney took the Salt Lake City job.
Moreover, unwinding a private equity firm’s ownership structure is extremely complicated. The “firm” itself is largely a legal construct of convenience, since it doesn’t pay salaries, make investments or do much of anything else. Instead, what matters are the individual funds.
In the case of Bain Capital’s funds, it’s reasonable to assume that Romney was considered a “key man,” meaning that each fund’s limited partners could have voted to end the fund’s investment period — or take over fund management themselves — if a super-majority felt it prudent. But that didn’t happen, and Bain saw no reason to expend massive administrative effort to amend existing funds. Instead, it asked Romney to sign documents when necessary, and made the managerial/ownership changes on new funds going forward….
The part about lying to the SEC is absurd, since the SEC doesn’t require an owner to be the operational decision-maker (Romney delegated such responsibilities, as is his right).
It matters because Romney is a liar, crook, and a job down sizer and i don't want this clown representing the US as our President. Willard will be a liability to our country.
O.K., kid, so you want the Socialist in Chief ! We get it, you want to ne taken careof by the government. Do you even have a job ? Have you ever had a job ?
Come on now, when Mitt Romney said he "left" Bain in 2009, he probably just meant that he "left" the State where Bain was and went to Utah to work for the Olympics, not that he "left" the company. If you look at the word "left" in the dictionary, he may have meant he followed his "left" hand. He could have meant that he was "left" wing from a political standpoint. He probably didn't mean "left" as meaning "leave". When Mitt says something, you can't just assume that he means what he says. You really need to look at the dictionary to determine all the possible definitions or interpretations of what he might have meant and make sure you pick the one that muddies the waters enough to assure that Mitt didn't mean what he said, and therefore, could not possibly have lied.
You know, like when Mitt said that he "saw" his dad march with Martin Luther King Jr. He really didn't mean he "saw" this as in seeing with his eyes, rather that it was a "figure of speech". Figure of speech about...? Hmmm, what did he mean when he "saw"; was it something he saw like a vision, was it something he saw in a dream, or was it something Mitt's dad and Martin Luther King Jr. were doing to a tree? You know, like when George Washington chopped down the cherry tree. Perhaps they used a "saw" to cut down a cherry tree and what Mitt meant was that he cannot tell a lie, my dad did "saw" down a cherry tree with Martin Luther King Jr.
Not sure what Mitt really meant about "left" or "saw", but I am sure that the dictionary can explain what he meant. It appears that what he means when someone questions the truth of his statements is that he swears on the dictionary, or at least the definitions therein, that he is telling the truth, though most people would swear on the Bible.
It would appear that whenever Mitt Romney is caught in a lie, he merely needs to turn to the dictionary to explain what he meant or didn't mean. And like the definitions in the dictionary change over the years, so too does Mitt Romney on such minor issues as abortion, health care, job outsourcing, gay rights, and on and on. So, don't assume that what he means when he says something is what it means in the dictionary today. You really need to find out what the definitions in the dictionary were at the time that he said something that he didn't mean.
WOW, are you confused? Me too! Wouldn't it be so much easier just to tell the truth!!!
If Romney did something wrong, the president would have got him indicted already. The president criticized Romney for outsourcing, but he made General Electric CEO as his economic adviser. General Electric is a big outsourcing company.
The president and MSNBC should stop bullying Romney. Be honest and try not to win the election at all cost.
Top CEOs probably have a personal calendar schedule book that details about all their hours awake every day. Ask Mitt to divulge his personal calendar schedules for years after 1999.