The Boston Globe's Christopher Rowland sat down with Rachel Maddow Thursday evening to discuss his recent article on Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital which has been the latest source of controversy this week over when Mitt Romney actually retired from Bain and what role he still played there after he left to run the Olympics in 1999.
As Mediaite reported, Rowland is standing by those claims: Boston Globe Journalist Defends Report On Romney-Bain Capital Ties To Rachel Maddow:
Rowland explained that in spite of Romney using a claim that he left Bain in 1999 as a “line of defense” and a major talking point, the documents uncovered show he still had executive ties to Bain in the subsequent three years. He made it clear the report wasn’t trying to say he was in the boardroom every single day in the next three years playing an active role in decisions, but the papers show he still had “oversight responsibility.”
Maddow asked him if it’s commonplace or “legally sound” for someone who has departed a company to still be referred to in legal paperwork as still holding a position of power in the company. Rowland pointed to experts who have said it isn’t exactly “kosher.” He added that the Romney camp has tried to explain the documents were something akin to “legacy filings,” but given that new partnerships were being created at Bain up until 2002, Roland doubted this was the case.
Romney’s campaign, of course, has heavily objected to the Globe story and demanded an apology for implying Romney was directly managing things at Bain after 1999, which they argued wasn’t the case. Maddow read out the explanation to Rowland and asked him if that was alleged at any point. Rowland explained the report simply wanted to present the facts of the situation.
“Our story was really limited to looking at the discrepancies and the contradictions in the paperwork. So if you look at what the SEC filings show, that Bain on paper was calling Mitt Romney their president and their leader and chief executive after 1999 up until 2002… It’s really difficult for most laymen and most people in the political sphere as well to understand how both these things can be true.”
Brian Beutler has an op-ed over at TPM which gets to the heart of Romney campaign's arguments about whether he should be held responsible for what happened at Bain after he left to run the Olympics as well: Cutting Through The Bain Bamboozlement:
Technical questions are, for the moment, dominating the dispute over when Mitt Romney really left Bain Capital. But from my point of view, on the sidelines of this particular story, it all seems much, much simpler.
The reason this issue is in dispute at all is because Mitt Romney wants full political inoculation from anything Bain did between early 1999 and 2002, when he definitely truly left the company. He wasn’t in charge, except in a narrow, technical sense; he’d delegated his duties; Bain’s business practices from that period can’t be hung around his neck.
If you’re not already belly-laughing think about it this way.
For Romney to be truly off the hook politically for the stuff Bain was doing, he’d have to claim not lack of control, but lack of knowledge. And that’s just not going to wash with anyone. He could try going the “I didn’t have even the slightest idea what the company I technically still owned was doing” route, but he’d be marking himself as either dishonest or incompetent. Read on...
I would love to see someone ask Mitt Romney one question and that is, if you were no longer running Bain when you supposedly left in 1999, what in the hell were they paying you the $100,000 for? It must be nice to make six figures for supposedly doing nothing, or close to it. Oh well, at least he's not like those lazy freeloaders over at the NAACP who want all that "free stuff" for nothing. That would be just terrible, wouldn't it?
