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Obama spokesperson: We won't apologize for saying Romney might have misled the SEC

Mitt Romney's campaign is demanding that President Obama's team apologize for saying the presumed Republican presidential nominee might have

Mitt Romney's campaign is demanding that President Obama's team apologize for saying the presumed Republican presidential nominee might have committed a felony by "misrepresenting his own position at Bain to the SEC." The Obama campaign's retort: No dice, Mitt.

The firestorm started after the Boston Globe reported on SEC filings indicating that Romney had remained in charge of private equity firm Bain Capital several years longer than he's claimed in the past. Romney has said he left Bain that year to run the Winter Olympics in Utah. But the newly publicized documents show that he was at least nominally in charge of the company until 2002.

Stephanie Cutter, Obama's deputy campaign manager, told reporters on a conference call that Romney is either a liar who is "misrepresenting his own position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony, or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people."

Matt Rhoades, Romney's campaign  manager, demanded an apology for Cutter's "reckless and unsubstantiated charge," maintaining that Romney had no input on Bain's decisions after 1999.


On Thursday, msnbc's Ed Schultz asked Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt if his team would issue an apology.

"There won't be" one, LaBolt said. "Mitt Romney has been telling voters since he ran for office in Massachusetts that he left Bain in 1999 and the Boston Globe reported today that it wasn't true."

"Mitt Romney is holding himself to a double standard," he went on. At Bain, "he was CEO, chairman of the board, sole owner and sole shareholder. We're supposed to believe he didn't have any involvement?"