Caught In A Lie: Romney Invested In Medical Waste Firm That Disposed Of Aborted Fetuses
Harry Decker July 2nd, 2012 5:42 pm
Mitt Romney’s Bain problem just got a lot worse.
According to a new report [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/romney-bain-abortion-stericycle-sec?utm_source=feedburner ] by Mother Jones’ David Corn, Bain Capital made a $75 million investment in Stericycle — a medical waste disposal firm that has been attacked by right wing groups for disposing of aborted fetuses — while Romney was still actively involved in the company in 1999. This news is sure to upset social conservatives, and it also directly contradicts Romney’s account of when he left Bain.
Romney’s connection to Stericycle was first reported in January by The Huffington Post, [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/17/mitt-romney-bain-capital-stericycle_n_1211228.html ]but the story never gained traction because Bain Capital claimed that Romney left the firm to run the Winter Olympics in February of 1999 — meaning that he had nothing to do with the deal. According to SEC documents unearthed by Corn, however, Romney was still actively involved in the firm’s leadership through the end of that year:
As Corn points out, the SEC documents have implications that reach farther than Stericycle The Romney campaign repeated its assertion that Romney left Bain in February 1999 when rebutting a recent Washington Post story reporting that Bain acquired companies that outsourced jobs. According to these SEC filings, that is not true.
The issue here is not that Romney was investing with a company that disposed of aborted fetuses; after all, abortion is legal, something must be done with the medical waste produced by them, and according to Corn the investment was quite profitable for Bain and its investors.
The issue is that Romney has once again been caught in a lie about his past, and once again he has given voters a reason to be suspicious over his record at Bain — which he’s used as the central thesis of his campaign.
Romney is already having a difficult time talking about his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, given that he is now running against the signature achievement of his term. If voters reject his version of the Bain Capital story as well, then it is hard to see what his campaign’s message could be moving forward.
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