As I brought up earlier, if Mitt Romney did in fact leave Bain in 1999, then why were documents filed with the SEC saying he was there until 2002? First let’s look at Romney’s latest defense:

“The article is not accurate,” Romney press secretary Andrea Saul said in a statement. “As Bain Capital has said, as Governor Romney has said, and as has been confirmed by independent fact checkers multiple times, Governor Romney left Bain Capital in February of 1999 to run the Olympics and had no input on investments or management of companies after that point.”

In a conversation with POLITICO, Romney adviser Matt McDonald also said the Globe report was inaccurate. “Romney wasn’t involved in any investment decisions,” McDonald said. “He was on the SEC filings becasue he was still techinically the owner, but hadn’t transferred ownership to other partners.”

And the Obama campaign is taking a very serious look at this:

Obama campaign lawyer Robert Bauer noted on Thursday that there could be “severe consequences” for individuals and companies that lied to the SEC.

“If in fact as he now claims that he was not active with the company, that he was not the controlling person that is described here, that means that these statements are false and as I said, there are very, very serious legal consequences that would follow,” Bauer explained.

“Of particular consequence would be a misrepresentation that involves a controlling person,” he added. “And as these representations show, Romney is the controlling person. You know, he is the person who is the sole stockholder, the chairman of the board, the chief executive officer and the president. And the consequences for the controlling person of this sort of potential misrepresentation — and frankly on this record, it appears by his own words — absolute misrepresentation because he’s now saying none of this matters, none of this is true.”

So Romney is saying he wasn’t the controlling person at Bain, yet Bain filed legal documents stating the opposite.

I’ve got a suggestion to Republicans. You have a little over a month until your convention and nominating Mitt Romney. I suggest pushing Romney to fully come clean on this. If he was controlling Bain, then fine, fight back on it. But if it turns out that Romney lied on federal documents filed with the SEC, a federal crime, then I suggest looking for someone else to nominate. These are very serious allegations and should be addressed. If I were a Republican, I would want that done before giving Romney the nod to November.