Rachel Maddow: "Mitt Romney has a tell."

[ProSense]

19. Here:

(The first is a 2002 article)

Romney says he didn’t file as Mass. resident in ’99-’00

Candidate amended returns after launching candidacy for governor

By Frank Phillips

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Mitt Romney contradicted his previous public statements yesterday, and said for the first time that he did not file Massachusetts income tax returns for 1999 and 2000 as a resident of this state.

At a news conference, Romney said that he filed as a part-year resident for 1999 and a nonresident for 2000. He amended those returns, claiming Massachusetts resident status, on April 2, a week after he announced he was running for governor of Massachusetts and four days before the state Republican convention that endorsed his candidacy.

The Massachusetts Constitution requires a governor to be a resident for each of the seven years prior to the election. Romney has been embroiled in a controversy over his residency since Wednesday, when the Globe reported his home in Park City, Utah, was classified as his “primary residence” for 1999 through 2001, giving him a $54,000 break on his property taxes.

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Romney’s revelations about his amended returns came one day after he told reporters he had “filed both as a resident of Utah and a resident of Massachusetts” when asked whether he filed taxes as a resident of Massachusetts from 1999 to 2001.

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http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2002/06/07/romney-says-didn-file-mass-resident/cxg3maVKXTA0iIuekT4QPO/story.html

Romney: ‘I Don’t Recall’ Coming Back For Mass. Meetings

Mitt Romney said that he had no recollection of returning to Massachusetts for business meetings in 2002 following his departure from Bain Capital to head the Olympics in Salt Lake City.

“I left Bain in February of 1999,” Romney said in an interview with CBS’s Jan Crawford on Friday evening. ”People can point out how - I was in Salt Lake City for three straight years. I don’t recall even coming back once to go to a Bain or management meeting. We were, I was out there running the Olympics and it was a full time job, I can tell you that.”

Romney testified to Massachusetts officials in 2002 that he maintained business ties during his Olympics work, undermining his argument that he had no connection to Bain Capital or related companies after 1999.

“So not once,” Crawford pressed, “you don’t remember a board meeting, you don’t remember talking about whether or not there should be outsourcing jobs overseas? Do you remember any involvement with Bain Capital from 1999 on?”

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http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/romney-i-dont-recall-coming-back-for-mass

Mitt Romney told CBS News‘s Jan Crawford Friday evening that he did not attend Bain Capital meetings after he left the company in February of 1999 to run the Winter Olympics. But this answer appears to contradict sworn testimony he delivered in 2002 “as part of a hearing to determine whether he had sufficient residency status in Massachusetts to run for governor”:

– 2002: “(T)here were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth.”

– 2012: “I was in Salt Lake City for three straight years. I don’t recall even coming back once to go to a Bain or management meeting. We were, I was out there running the Olympics and it was a full time job, I can tell you that.”

- more -

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/07/13/516951/romney-interview-directly-contradicts-his-previous-statements-about-bain-tenure

Yes, Romney Perjured Himself

The claim that he committed a felony by falsely reporting his role at Bain Capital under oath is what has really gotten under Romney's skin. But it seems pretty clear to me that he signed a federal financial disclosure form, under the penalty of perjury, saying he had not been involved "in any way" with Bain after he left for Utah in February 1999. That's a strong statement. And it is directly undercut by Romney's own statement in his 2002 attempt to prove residency to run for governor:

Romney testified that “there were a number of social trips and business trips that brought (him) back to Massachusetts, board meetings” while he was running the Olympics. He added that he remained on the boards of several companies, including the Lifelike Co., in which Bain Capital held a stake until 2001...

“He succeeded in that three-year period in restoring confidence in the Olympic Games, closing that disastrous deficit and staging one of the most successful Olympic Games ever to occur on US soil,” said Peter L. Ebb from Ropes & Gray, (his lawyer at the 2002 hearing).

“Now while all that was going on, very much in the public eye, what happened to his private and public ties to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? And the answer is they continued unabated just as they had.”

So the question of whether Romney committed a felony in his financial disclosure form is a very real one - because Romney and Romney's lawyer provide the strongest evidence that it was perjury. Now we have more contemporaneous evidence that Romney perjured himself:

During the 2002 hearing — in a remark that has not been previously reported — Romney said that after he departed Bain in February 1999 he went through a transition period regarding his work in Boston.

When a lawyer challenging his eligibility asked Romney, "Did you remain more or less continuously in Salt Lake City from February '99 to the end of the year," Romney answered: "Actually, there was some transition away from my work in Boston for the first few months and then I pretty much stayed there after." Trying to clarify this, the lawyer, after referring to this "transition," asked, "So from February through the end of the year you were pretty much full-time out in Utah, right?" Romney replied: "Well again, the beginning of the year was a good deal of time back and forth, but towards the last half of the year it was pretty much exclusively in Utah."

If there was a good deal of time back and forth in the first few months and some business conducted all the way through to December ("pretty much exclusively&quot , and if Romney's own lawyer tells an inquiry that Romney's work for Bain "continued unabated just as they had," then it is incontrovertibly true that Romney's statement under oath that he was not involved "in any way" in Bain business after February 1999 was a lie under oath.

- more -

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/07/yes-romney-perjured-himself.html

Hope that helps!