Romney Campaign Claims He Retired Retroactively (But Kept All of the Profits)

Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 05:19 pm

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Don’t blame Romney for how he made his money. See, all of this fuss about his inaccurate filings (a federal felony, by the way) – that applies to the little people. If you’re W. Mitt Romney, it’s just a misunderstanding because you didn’t get around to doing it in a timely manner. It took you three years to remember to retire, and in that time, you were going to board meetings and signing documents for Bain, and as the 100% shareholder, you were making all of the profit.

Watch Ed Gillespie, a senior campaign advisor for the Romney campaign, move the shell of responsibility for W. Mitt Romney on Meet the Press here:

Transcript from Think Progress:

GREGORY: He was still financially linked to Bain. And of course, a lot his fortune is due to his time with Bain. Even when he was on leave, does he stand by the business decisions that were made by the firm he created?

GILLESPIE: He actually retired retroactively at that point. He ended up not going back to the firm after his time in Salt Lake City. So he was actually retired from Bain.

W. Mitt Romney’s new argument for why he’s not responsible for the outsourcing of Bain while documents say he was the President, Shareholder, CEO and Chairman of the Board is that later, after he made all of that cash from outsourcing, he retroactively retired. Neat trick! But don’t you try this at home. This is only for the very, very privileged.

Since the Romney camp declared King like that he retired “retroactively”, he is supposed to be exonerated from a) how he made the money b) filing inaccurately and perhaps fraudulently and c) he gets to say one thing to the state disclosure people and another to the federal disclosure people at the same time and not be accountable. Oh, and of course, he gets to tell you whatever he wants and you have to believe. Just trust. You wouldn’t understand. He’s a businessman (aka, divine, untouchable God).

Also, he can claim he was in Massachusetts to conduct business for Bain and therefor eligible to run for Governor, but years later he can say he had retired retroactively and just forgot to get around to filing stuff.

So, hey, Americans! Those tax returns you have to be so careful on, heck, you can just forget to file that you left that company you’re making all of that profit from — and you can forget to tell the SEC, which keeps track of this stuff because of rampant financial disclosure fraud which led to people at the top lying to investors and cheating them out of the information they needed to make a smart investment.

Those rules that Romney is scoffing at? Those are the rules put into place to make someone accountable for corporate actions. If you’ve ever invested in the stock market, you remember when corporations were lying about their finanicials in order to mislead investors into thinking they were a good risk when they were not. Well, these rules about disclosures (the ones Romney and Bain filed that claimed he was the man in charge) are meant, in part, to at least put a bump in the road for the average investor — the middle class family saving for their retirement who likes to invest in American companies and their own future.

Romney’s message to them is screw you, you don’t need to know. While Bain wasn’t publicly traded during this time period, the issue is one of accountability and the rules are there for that purpose. You don’t get to go back and have a three year do-over thirteen years later.

But, when you’re king….

Those rules don’t apply to you.

The Romney campaign is no longer denying Romney was at Bain during the time period in question (1999-2002). Now they are saying that he retroactively retired.

Forgive my crudity, but that’s like retroactively pulling out.

Romney himself said he was sole shareholder, etc in 2003 for 2002. Now he wants to pretend he was never there, but the seeds of his late withdrawal are hard to miss. He’s like an irresponsible boy who got a girl pregnant and first claimed he wasn’t there, didn’t know her, but now, after DNA tests, says he withdrew so it shouldn’t count.

That’s not how real life works. Or rather, that’s not how it works for the little people.

Sarah Jones

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