President Obama's reelection team took aim Wednesday at Mitt Romney's explanation of this tenure at Bain Capital in a new Web video.
The video features people on the street reading an interview verbatim that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee gave to CBS News last Friday to explain his timeline at the private-equity firm.
"I was the owner of an entity which was a management entity. That entity was one which I had ownership of until the time of the retirement program was put in place. But I had no responsibility whatsoever after February of '99 for the management or ownership — management, rather, of Bain Capital," read various people in the video, repeating the
CBS transcript.
"That sounds very suspicious," says one woman in the video after reading Romney's interview response. "That's kind of concerning," says another woman.
The
Boston Globe reported last week that Romney filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that list him as Bain's president and CEO after 1999, when he left the company to run the Salt Lake City Olympics. The Obama campaign is trying to link Romney to the outsourcing of jobs by American companies owned by Bain during that time.
"Most Americans would find his explanation to be incoherent and confusing. With evidence continuing to mount that shows Romney remained active at Bain after 1999, the bottom line is clear: Romney needs to come clean so the American people can make their own judgments about his record, perspective and motivations," said text released by the Obama campaign with the video.
The Romney campaign maintains that while the presumptive GOP nominee remained at the company in title, he was not involved in day-to-day operations after 1999.
The controversy over Romney's tenure at Bain escalated after Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter suggested last week that he might have committed a "felony" by filing inaccurate statements with financial regulators. The Obama campaign rebuffed Romney's calls for an apology, saying that the GOP candidate needed to be "upfront" about his involvement with Bain.
During the CBS interview used in the Obama ad, Romney called the attacks the "height of silliness" and slammed the president for attempting to divert attention from the struggling economy.
"We've got people, 23 million people, that are out of work or stopped looking for work, need jobs, and the Obama campaign is out there month after month talking about one attack after the other on me. How about talking about the president's failure to get this economy going?" said Romney.
