Is it time for Obama to step down? Breaking Scandal!

Romney did not leave Bain Capital as part of a long-term, planned succession process. Instead, his departure was fairly sudden — 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 the Olympics.

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.

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.
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).

Fortune magazine 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.

No this scandal.

WASHINGTON -- Between 1999 and 2001, Mitt Romney, then the CEO of Bain Capital, signed at least six documents that the private equity firm filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The documents run in direct contradiction to a claim that Romney has made repeatedly: that he had nothing to do with Bain, and therefore no responsibility for Bain investments, during that period.



It's also a claim he made in August 2011 on the federal disclosure form he filed as part of his presidential bid. Romney didn't leave any wiggle room: "Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee [for the 2002 Winter Olympics]. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way."



That is false.



SEC files include at least six instances of Romney signing documents after February 1999, proving -- unless the signatures were forged -- that his claim to not have "been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way" is wrong.



Most of the documents reference Romney as the "reporting person." Most of the filings were first reported by Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, although he noted them in an opinion column otherwise dedicated to demonstrating that Kessler was correct weeks ago when he wrote that Romney had parted ways with Bain in 1999.



For instance, in April 1999, Romney signed documents related to a Bain deal with Pirod Holdings.







In November of that year, his signature appears on documents connected to a deal with Stericycle.



In January 2000, he signed paperwork for a deal with VMM Merger Corp.



His John Hancock appears on ChipPAC Inc. documents in February 2001.



That same month, Romney's signature can be found on paperwork connected to a Bain deal with Integrated Circuit Systems Inc.



In February 2000, he signed documents related to a deal with Wesley Jessen Visioncare Inc.



"There's no contradiction here," a Romney spokesperson told HuffPost in a statement. "He did not participate in the investment or management decisions on any of these or any other investments during this period, as has been said repeatedly by Bain Capital and as was unanimously determined by the bipartisan Massachusetts ballot commission in 2002."



That's not entirely true, either.



As HuffPost reported Thursday, Romney sat in on the board meetings of at least one Bain investment. And the SEC filings back up Romney's own earlier statements involving Bain. In February 1999, the Boston Herald reported that "Romney said he will stay on as a part-timer with Bain, providing input on investments and key personnel decisions. But he will leave running day-to-day operations to Bain's executive committee."



In 2002, the Boston Globe quoted Bain employee Marc Wolpow saying, "I reported directly to Mitt Romney ... You can’t be CEO of Bain Capital and say, 'I really don’t know what my guys were doing.'"



Romney later said that he became too busy organizing the Winter Olympics and couldn't fulfill even the basic responsibilities he had outlined to the Herald. Yet in a 2002 hearing in a dispute over whether he was a Massachusetts resident eligible to run for governor, he testified that he still attended board meetings for at least one Bain-affiliated company.



Also in that hearing, he claimed to have taken a temporary leave of absence from Bain to helm the Salt Lake City Olympics.



As part of running for governor, Romney was required to submit personal financial disclosure statements to Massachusetts' State Ethics Commission under threat of perjury. In his 2001 disclosure statement, he listed himself as "Former Executive" for both Bain Capital Inc. and Bain Capital LLC, with a gross income of more than $100,000. But in his 2002 disclosure statement, he provided a different answer, listing himself as "Executive" of Bain Capital Inc. and Bain Capital LLC, with a gross income of more than $100,000. The latter may be one instance in which Romney and the SEC filings agree on his role.