Did Romney Commit Perjury?

When Mitt Romney signed a federal financial disclosure form for his current presidential bid, he stated under the penalty of perjury that he had not been involved “in any way” with Bain Capital after he left for Utah in February 1999.

Mother Jones reports that during a 2002 hearing to determine if Mitt Romney met the residency requirement to run for governor 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.'”

Andrew Sullivan: “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’), 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.

David Gergen disagrees that Romney lied: “I may be wrong but based on what we know so far, I would conclude that we do not have persuasive evidence to show that he has.”