Records Suggest Romney Stayed With Bain Years After He Claims (VIDEO)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/mitt-romney-bain-capital_n_1667772.html

When did Mitt Romney leave Bain Capital?

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has said that he left the private equity firm in 1999, but new reports indicate that he may have stayed on until 2002.

The Boston Globe reported Thursday on SEC filings dated after February 1999 that state that Romney is the firm's "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president." A 2003 Massachusetts disclosure form says that he owned 100 percent of the company in 2002, and forms indicate that he earned $100,000 as an "executive" in 2001 and 2002, apart from investments.

A Romney official told the Globe that the SEC filings "do not square with common sense."

"The article is not accurate," spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement sent to reporters. "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."

The story came out the same day that the Romney campaign released a television ad blasting the Obama campaign for lying about his tenure at Bain Capital. But this tactic may only serve to draw more attention to the substance of Obama's criticisms. As Romney said Wednesday on Fox News, "I respond to the attacks that come, but they say in politics if you are responding, you are losing," adding that it was better to call them "completely off base."

Mother Jones and Talking Points Memo have also highlighted SEC filings that suggest Romney did not leave the company in full in 1999.

The date Romney left the company is important, since he cites it to rebut the charge that Bain invested in firms that outsourced jobs.