Cuccinelli amends disclosure forms 26APR13

MUST be when it come to his politics, his wheeling & dealing, cuccinelli's Christian faith doesn't play a role. To understand how this could have happened one must keep in mind our Virginia AG has been very busy passing his personal judgement on the individual and political morality of us heathens. I just am filled with wonder and awe as he manages to do so with that huge mote in his own eye! From the Washington Post.....

Steve Helber/Associated Press - Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli gestures as he talks about the Supreme Court decision on federal health care reform during a news conference June 28, 2012, in Richmond.

By Laura Vozzella,

RICHMOND — Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II announced Friday that he had received more gifts from Star Scientific chief executive Jonnie R. Williams Sr. than he had previously disclosed, and that he had asked the Richmond commonwealth’s attorney to review his disclosure filings.

Cuccinelli, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, said he had failed to disclose that he and his family had stayed at Williams’s Smith Mountain Lake vacation house last summer and for Thanksgiving in 2010, when Williams also supplied the turkey dinner.

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He valued those gifts at a combined $4,500. He also failed to report a $628 flight to New York City from Williams, to attend a Jewish community center event in 2009.

That’s on top of nearly $13,000 in gifts that Cuccinelli had previously reported receiving from Williams.

Cuccinelli said he simply forgot to include the gifts when originally filing his annual disclosure forms. He said a staff member reminded him last week of his 2012 vacation at Williams’s house, prompting him to review his disclosure forms. When he realized that vacation was not included, he said he reviewed calendars for previous years and realized there had been other oversights.

“I missed some things that I was supposed to disclose,” Cuccinelli said. “It was all inadvertent.”

He found two other gifts unrelated to Williams: a chartered flight worth $7,751 for himself and his parents to Southwest Virginia, where Cuccinelli was giving a speech, provided by Alpha Natural Resources; and transportation worth $795 from the Federation of American Coal, Energy and Security.

Until recently, Cuccinelli also owned stock in Star, a former cigarette maker that now makes a nutritional supplement with an substance found in tobacco. Cuccinelli initially failed to disclose his stock holdings but corrected what he said was an oversight in 2012, before recent media scrutiny of the company, which is the subject of a federal securities investigation and two shareholder lawsuits.

The lawsuits alleging that Star, which has lost money for 10 years, misled investors about the promise of its supplement and a facial cream it also makes. Both are sold under the brand name Anatabloc.

Cuccinelli’s ties to Williams have been an unexpected complication to his gubernatorial campaign, with Democrats claiming that his office had conflicts of interests with two cases tied to the Star executive.

Williams has a tax lawsuit against the commonwealth, which has been pending for more than 18 months. Cuccinelli’s office also has a connection to a criminal case against the former chef at the governor’s mansion, who is charged with felony embezzlement.

Williams paid the $15,000 catering tab at the wedding of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s daughter, which the chef, Todd Schneider, catered through his private company. Schneider indicated in a motion filed in his case this week that he intends to raise questions about Williams’s gifts to the McDonnell family as part of his defense.

Cuccinelli announced April 4 that he would hand off Star’s tax-assessment lawsuit to private attorneys, who agreed to represent the state for free. Following Schneider’s motion this week, Cuccinelli’s office also said it would seek recusal from prosecution of the chef.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-politics/cuccinelli-amends-disclosure-forms/2013/04/26/febe0016-ae99-11e2-98ef-d1072ed3cc27_story.html?wpisrc=al_lclpolitics

What We Know About Romney and Bain, Explained 13JUL12

mitt romney is a liar, pure and simple. He continues to lie about his involvement with bain capital after 1999, outsourcing and

—By Adam Serwer

davelawrence8/Flickr

The battle over Mitt Romney's role at Bain and whether he was actually running the company after he claims to have left continues. Here's what we know about the GOP presidential candidate's involvement with the private equity firm:
Romney claims he left Bain in 1999. 

• In his 2011 federal financial disclosure documents, Romney asserted that he left Bain in 1999 to run the Olympics and "had not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital Entity in any way" since then.
• Bain released a statement to Politico saying that Romney's story is true:

Mitt Romney left Bain Capital in February 1999 to run the Olympics and has had absolutely no involvement with the management or investment activities of the firm or with any of its portfolio companies since the day of his departure. Due to the sudden nature of Mr. Romney's departure, he remained the sole stockholder for a time while formal ownership was being documented and transferred to the group of partners who took over management of the firm in 1999. Accordingly, Mr. Romney was reported in various capacities on SEC filings during this period."

Official documents and other sources contradict Romney and Bain's account.
Among them:

• Six SEC filings announcing Bain's acquisition of other companies (collected here by the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler) that are signed by Mitt Romney.
• Those SEC filings, among them those first highlighted by my Mother Jones colleague David Corn and Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall, list Romney's "principal occupation" as "managing director of Bain, Inc," as well as "chairman" and "chief executive officer."
• As David reported on July 2, a press release issued on Bain's behalf in 1999 describes Romney as the CEO of Bain and says he's on a "a part-time leave of absence to head the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee."
• Sworn testimony uncovered by Huffington Post's Ryan Grim and Jason Cherkis in which Romney states that "[T]here were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth," after 1999 and before 2003. Cherkis and Grim report that during this time, Romney continued to sit on the boards of Staples and LifeLike, a doll-making company—firms that Bain had invested in. 
• As Grim and Cherkis reported, Romney's lawyer said in 2002 that Romney's "private and public ties to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts" continued "unabated" during his time running the Olympics.
• Romney told the Globe in 1999 that he would "stay on as a part-timer with Bain, providing input on investment and key personnel decisions." As Slate's Dave Weigel points out, this article was cited in an email the Romney campaign sent out to rebut claims that Romney remained involved with Bain after 1999.
• News reports from during Romney's 2002 run for governor refer to his affiliation with Bain during the 1999-2002 period as a "leave of absence," not a full departure. As Politicker reported Friday, Romney retained a "very active role" with Bain during a previous leave of absence, when he ran for Senate in 1994. 

So where does that leave us?

• Bain and Romney's claim that he had "absolutely no involvement with the management or investment activities of the firm or any of its portfolio companies" is deeply implausible, given the SEC filings and Romney's role on the boards of LifeLike and Staples. Lifelike, in particular, was a Bain portfolio company by any definition, and Romney was on its board—perhaps a passive management role, but indisputably a management role. As Brad DeLong writes, "It would be very unusual for somebody to have the titles of not just 'CEO' but 'President,' 'Chairman of the Board' and be 'sole stockholder' and to have no responsibilities whatsoever." As a factual matter, Romney's claim of zero involvement is contradicted by what we currently know. 
• That said, none of the documents uncovered so far disprove Romney's claim that he had no direct, day-to-day managerial role at Bain after February 1999. The Romney campaign seems to believe that inoculates the candidate from responsibility for Bain's investment decisions during that time, despite the fact that Romney continued as CEO, president, and chairman of the board and benefited financially from Bain's investments.
• But even if Romney wasn't involved in Bain after 1999 (a claim contradicted by the documentary evidence), he's still not off the hook for outsourcing. As my Mother Jones colleague David Corn has reported, there's at least one example of Bain investing in outsourcing prior to the date Romney says he left.

Although the Obama campaign's initial claims about Romney's personally deciding to invest in outsourcing post-1999 were misleading, the Obama camp has shifted from accusing Romney of being directly responsible for deals that moved jobs overseas to accusing Romney of profiting from such deals, which is beyond dispute.
As Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler wrote on Thursday, "For Romney to be truly off the hook politically for the stuff Bain was doing, he'd have to claim not lack of control, but lack of knowledge." It's hard to believe that Romney didn't know what was going on at a company where he was the president, CEO, chairman of the board, and owner.
UPDATE: In an interview with local DC ABC affiliate WJLA, President Barack Obama says Romney should have to answer questions about his tenure at Bain:

Ultimately Mr. Romney, I think, is going to have to answer those questions, because if he aspires to being president one of the things you learn is, you are ultimately responsible for the conduct of your operations, but again that's probably a question that he's going to have to answer and I think that's a legitimate part of the campaign.
Now, my understanding is that Mr. Romney attested to the SEC, multiple times, that he was the chairman, CEO and president of Bain Capital and I think most Americans figure if you are the chairman, CEO and president of a company that you are responsible for what that company does.

Adam Serwer

Reporter

Adam Serwer is a reporter at the Washington, DC, bureau of Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. You can also follow him on Twitter. Email tips and insights to aserwer [at] motherjones [dot] com. RSS | Twitter

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Democrats say Mitt Romney failed to disclose offshore company in Bermuda 10JUL12

mitt romney is digging his own grave on this issue. The nation is in recession, there are a lot of people still struggling, and romney defends the 1% as job creators that should not be subjected to higher taxes. The perception is what he is really doing is just protecting the rich, including himself, from paying their fair share in taxes, especially with the discovery of romney's overseas bank accounts and corporate holdings in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. Here is PolitiFact's ruling on romney's corporate Bermuda holdings.....

Says Mitt Romney "has a corporation in Bermuda (but) failed to disclose that on seven different financial disclosures."

Robert Gibbs on Sunday, July 8th, 2012 in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union"

Democrats say Mitt Romney failed to disclose offshore company in Bermuda

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In the Democratic playbook, the more attention paid to Mitt Romney’s wealth, the better. Over the past few days, many Democrats questioned whether Romney used offshore holdings to dodge U.S. taxes and pressed him to release more of his personal financial information. Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs took the occasion during CNN’s State of the Union to say, "Nobody knows why he has a corporation in Bermuda, why he failed to disclose that on seven different financial disclosures."

We wondered if Gibbs had his facts right. Does Romney currently have a stake in a Bermuda corporation? And did he fail to disclose it seven times?

Reporting by the Associated Press and Vanity Fair teed this up. Both news organizations explored one of Romney’s overseas accounts, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors, Ltd. The firm is described in SEC filings as "a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney." (For more details, check out the AP's interesting account.)

In his 2010 tax return and his 2011 estimated filing, Romney includes Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors, Ltd. The beginning balance is pegged at $10,432. He and his wife Ann are the sole owners.  According to the Associated Press, Romney ran his investments in other Bain Capital deals through this offshore corporation.

Democrats have pounced on the issue. Offshore holdings might be perfectly legal, but they also might paint Romney as one of the super-rich who may be using an offshore tax shelter.

Romney’s ownership of Sankaty is not in doubt, at least not as recently as this past December, according to Romney’s 2011 estimated tax return. So Gibbs appears to be on solid ground that Romney has the company now. We asked the Romney campaign if they could give us more current information on the status of Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors, but they did not respond.

In an interview with Radio Iowa on Monday, Romney deflected the issue, saying his foreign investments are in a blind trust.

"I don’t manage them. I don’t even know where they are," Romney said. "That trustee follows all U.S. laws. All the taxes are paid, as appropriate. All of them have been reported to the government. There’s nothing hidden there."

As for Gibbs’ other assertion that Romney has failed to disclose his stake in Sankaty seven times, that also is largely accurate. We counted six disclosure forms where Romney made no reference at all to the Bermuda corporation. Those include his filings in Massachusetts when he was running for governor or holding office and his federal disclosures for his presidential bids.

The seventh appears to be his 2001 disclosure, which lists Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors LLC. Note the slight difference in those three letters -- LLC instead of Ltd. The LLC, a limited liability corporation he named on the form, is based in Delaware. The offshore corporation by the same name ends in Ltd. and there is no mention of it until Romney’s lawyers began amending his disclosures this year.

There is some question whether he was required to disclose this asset. In 2003, on the eve of running for governor, he put Sankaty into a blind trust. Thereafter, he disclosed the presence of the trust and might not have been required to say what was in it. It is also unclear whether the nominal value of Sankaty would be high enough to warrant disclosure.

In 2011, its value was $10,432. However, as the Associated Press pointed out, that could well ignore the potential income that might flow through the fund. It is possible for investments made many years ago to produce over $1 million in payoffs that suddenly appear on the books.

Our ruling

Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs said Romney owns a Bermuda-based corporation and that he failed to disclose his ownership seven times.

The documentary evidence indicates Gibbs is right that Romney owned it when he filed his estimated tax return in December and that he did not disclose it earlier. The Romney campaign has not said the statements are wrong.

We rate Gibbs claim True.
UPDATE -- We may have had the lyrics to Kokomo in our heads ("Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama...") because twice in this article we referred to the Bahamas when we meant Bermuda. We've corrected the mistakes, although we still can't get the song our of our head.

About this statement:

Published: Tuesday, July 10th, 2012 at 3:59 p.m.
Subjects: Candidate Biography, Corrections and Updates, Taxes
Sources:
CNN, State of the Union with Candy Crowley, July 8, 2012

Vanity Fair, Where the Money Lives, Nicholas Shaxson, August 2012

Associated Press, Assets Offshore Raise Romney Wealth Questions, July 4, 2012

Politico, Robert Gibbs, Dan Senor duke it out on disclosure,Tim Mack, July 9, 2012

Reuters, Obama Team Targets Romney over Taxes, Republican Call Foul, Tabassa Zakaria, July 8, 2012,

Talking Points Memo, Romney, Obama Campaigns Duel Over Offshore Accounts, July 8, 2012

Obama Campaign, Ben LaBolt: Mitt Romney’s Offshore Bank Accounts, video

Radio Iowa, Romney Calls Obama Tax Plan a ‘Job Killer’, and Audio, July 9, 2012

TPM, Romney: I Didn’t Even Know About That Bermuda Company!, July 10, 2012

Boston.com, Romney’s 2011 estimated tax return

Massachusetts Democratic Party, Romney’s Disclosure Forms - 2001-2007

Open Secrets.org, Romney: Personal Finance Disclosures,

Securities and Exchange Commission, Sankaty Ownership Document, March 14, 2006

GoBig Network, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors, LLC Profile,
Written by: Jon Greenberg
Researched by: Jon Greenberg
Edited by: Bill Adair



http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/10/robert-gibbs/democrats-say-mitt-romney-failed-disclose-offshore/