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Let's step back up a second. The Obama campaign ran ads a short time ago and accused Romney of investing in firms that resulted in outsourcing jobs and increasing unemployment in the US. Romney claimed he was not responsible for his Bain vulture capital firm when this activity was taking place because he had left the company.
However, the Boston Globe revealed today (based on earlier stories in Talking Points Memo and Mother Jones):
Government documents filed by Mitt Romney and Bain Capital say Romney remained chief executive and chairman of the firm three years beyond the date he said he ceded control, even creating five new investment partnerships during that time.
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 (SEC) 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 timing of Romney's departure from Bain is a key point of contention because he has said his resignation in February 1999 meant he was not responsible for Bain Capital companies that went bankrupt or laid off workers after that date.
This blows a huge credibility hole in the Romney narrative of being a job creator, in addition to his own company's documents contradicting him and leaving little room to conclude anything other than that he lied. It will be legally impossible for him to effectively deny what is stated in SEC documents and Massachusetts state filings, because that could raise the specter of being accused of fraudulent financial reports. FactCheck.org previously implied that such a scenario, filing false government reporting documents, would be a felony.
So Romney is stuck with the now discovered fact that he dissembled when he claimed he didn't have a decision making or controlling relationship with Bain, when in fact he was legally the CEO and sole owner.
In fact, the Boston Globe cited a rebuttal of the Romney campaign's effort to minimize the legally binding filings:
A former SEC commissioner told the Globe that the SEC documents listing Romney as Bain's chief executive between 1999 and 2002 cannot be dismissed so easily.
"You can't say statements filed with the SEC are meaningless. This is a fact in an SEC filing," said Roberta S. Karmel, now a professor at Brooklyn Law School.
"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to say he was technically in charge on paper but he had nothing to do with Bain's operations," Karmel continued. "Was he getting paid? He's the sole stockholder. Are you telling me he owned the company but had no say in its investments?"
Even before this discovery, the Washington Post had refused to retract a story about Romney's backing of companies outsourcing jobs.
The headline on a July 11 Mother Jones story further backs Romney into a tangled web of deceit on the issue of supporting moving jobs overseas for personal (his firm's) profit: "Romney Invested Millions in Chinese Firm That Profited on US Outsourcing. The GOP candidate decries China poaching US jobs. But at Bain he held a large stake in a Chinese company that did just that."
Given the major league deception that has been disclosed over the last couple of days, it makes you wonder if Romney doesn't finally empathize with Seamus, the dog he put in a crate and latched onto the top of the family van for a long trip to the Romney summer compound in Canada.
Except dogs don't lie.
Hat tip to Truthout's William Rivers Pitt for providing background for this column.
Probably not, and psychopaths never do; so maybe there's a little bit of arithmetic awaiting the sagacious sleuth.