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Romney Keeps Secrets Unless Law Says He Can’t
BOSTON (AP)– Keeping his secrets, Mitt Romney tends to lift the veil on his finances and campaign only if the law says he must. The Republican presidential candidate refuses to identify his biggest donors who “bundle” money for his campaign. He often declines to say who’s meeting with him or what he’s doing for hours at a time. He puts limits on media access to his fundraisers.
One of the wealthiest Americans to seek the Presidency at a low tax rate of 13.9%
Romney resists releasing all of his tax returns, making just a single year public after facing pressure to do so.
Romney’s secrecy goes beyond the details of his campaign schedule or his policy proposals. He has been selective at best in providing public records from his 2003-2007 term as Massachusetts governor.
Late last year, he acknowledged that just before he left office he authorized a sweeping purge of electronic data from his executive office, allowing top aides to purchase and remove their computer hard drives. He also benefited from a law that widely exempted the governor’s office from state public records disclosure requirements. His campaign aides point to more than 600 boxes of materials that were sent from his office to the Massachusetts archives, but a week-long examination of the Romney records now in those archives by The Associated Press did not turn up a single email or internal document either authored by or sent to Romney. Some such emails have since surfaced in connection with public records requests.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
