A Bad Day for Mitt Romney To Call The President A Liar

So here's Mitt Romney's new ad defending his record on outsourcing by saying President Obama "doesn't tell the truth" and calling him "dishonest" for questioning Romney's activities at Bain Capital:

Romney Ad

The ad even uses the 'L' word, inexplicably accusing Obama of having "lied" about Hillary Clinton in 2008. I don't think any voter anywhere is going to be swayed by old clips from the 2008 primary, but I guess they wanted to play the video of Hillary saying "shame on you, Barack Obama." Whatever, I guess.

Anyway, that strange blast from the past aside, Mitt Romney really couldn't have picked a worse day to defend his Bain record by calling the president a liar.

First, the Boston Globe reported that contrary to Mitt Romney's claim to have left Bain in February of 1999, documents filed with the government described Romney as Bain's "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer and president" as late as 2002. So Romney is either lying now or he was lying then about his affiliation with Bain.

Second, David Corn of Mother Jones reports that in 1998—during which time even Romney admits he was still running Bain—Romney invested millions in a Chinese company whose business model was to help U.S. companies outsource manufacturing. And not only that, Romney used his Bermuda shell corporation to handle a portion of the investment. So he invested in outsourcing ... while using an offshore company domiciled in an international tax haven.

So with reports like these, you can see why I say this was a bad day for Mitt Romney to call President Obama a liar. And it might be time to start asking this: is it too late for Mitt Romney to end the bleeding by releasing his tax returns? Even if the returns don't lead to further revelations, aren't the facts that are already coming to light damning?

7:53 AM PT: The Obama campaign points out that the "evidence" in Romney's ad is entirely based on news reports that accept as given that Romney left Bain in February of 1999, but as today's Boston Globe report once again documents, that is not the case. In addition, Corn's story obviously puts the lie to Romney's claim.

7:55 AM PT: Also, it's amusing to note that while Romneyland tries to use February 1999 as a cutoff date to argue that nothing that happened after that point can be blamed on Romney, the centerpiece of Romney's argument that Bain created jobs is Staples. And much of that job creation took place ... after February of 1999. So even if Romney were telling the truth about when he left Bain, he's still tried to have it both ways.

Originally posted to The Jed Report on Thu Jul 12, 2012

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