In all of the increasingly entertaining news about Romney’s involved non-involvement with Bain after early 1999, this has been somewhat lost in the shuffle:
In January, the Huffington Post reported that Bain Capital (the private equity firm Romney founded) invested millions of dollars in Stericycle, a giant medical-waste disposal firm that anti-abortion groups have compared (with their usual tact) to the German firms that helped the Nazis out during the Holocaust. But Bain quickly helped stifle flip-flopper accusations by saying Romney left the company in February 1999, a whole eight months before the Stericycle deal went down. Conservatives rested easy, because when a private equity firm says something, it’s always 100% true.
But Mother Jones’ David Corn got his hands on documents filed by Bain with the Securities and Exchange Commission that prove Romney was an “active participant” in the deal. This revelation is troubling, even for those who don’t think that Stericycle is in cahoots with the devil: unless Bain and Romney fudged SEC documents, the papers show that Romney and Bain have lied repeatedly about the fact that he was a key player in a deal that led to bucketloads of cash for the firm’s partners.
As gross and awful as it is, someone has to dispose of medical waste. But the connection is just horrendous for the Romney campaign. Romney, however circuitously, profited from the disposal of aborted fetuses. Holy hell.
