Mitt Romney surrogate John H. Sununu said President Obama must be “dumb” for his campaign to insinuate that Romney might have committed a felony when he signed regulatory documents identifying himself as Bain Capital’s CEO and chairman for three years after he said he left the firm.
“Can you imagine how dumb this president is?,” the former New Hampshire governor asked Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday night. “Introducing the concept of felony into the discourse, when this president comes out of Chicago politics, where felony and politics are sometimes a synonym?”
Sununu said that Obama is the one who has ties to felons.
“This is a president whose next-door neighbor was Tony Rezko, and President Obama’s first big revenue were real estate deals that had odd coincidences in time and space with a felon, Tony Rezko,” he continued. “This is a president whose political training was jowl to cheek with politicians like convicted felons like [former Illinois Gov.] Rod Blagojevich, and this president is dumb enough to introduce the concept of felon into the discourse, with a guy as clean as Mitt Romney.”
“This president is not smart at all,” Sununu concluded.
Obama's team has been pressuring Romney over a report Thursday in the
Boston Globe that questioned when Romney severed ties with Bain Capital. Although both Romney and Bain have said that he left in 1999 to head the Salt Lake City Olympics, and no evidence has yet emerged to show that the Republican hopeful was involved in the day-to-day management of the firm, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that Romney maintained the title of president and CEO.
Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter said Thursday that this revelation meant that Romney was lying either in public statements or to federal regulators.
“Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony, or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments,” said Cutter. “And if that's the case, if he was lying to the American people, that's a real character and trust issue that the American people need to take seriously.”
Romney's campaign manager said Thursday that the president should apologize, but the Obama campaign stood by the remark, saying the Romney campaign “either misled the American people about when he left Bain or misled the SEC.”
Justin Sink contributed.
