Emanuel: Romney should answer for Bain

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WASHINGTON, July 15 (UPI) -- Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Sunday presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney should be held accountable for his time as Bain Capital chief.

Romney had demanded an apology from President Barack Obama for suggesting he lied about the date he left the venture capital company he founded.

A story in The Boston Globe last week said the president's deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, and campaign lawyer Bob Bauer argued Romney may have lied to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission about leaving Bain Capital in early 1999 to run the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Emanuel, Obama's campaign chairman, said Obama owes Romney no apology.

"Mitt Romney said Bain Capital is his calling card for why he should be president. He doesn't talk about Massachusetts as governor. He doesn't talk about any other piece. He says, 'I created jobs at Bain Capital,'" Emanuel said in a interview on ABC's "This Week."

Cutter and Bauer's accusations were based on the Globe report that SEC filings showed Romney remained chief executive officer, chairman and sole stockholder at Bain through 2002.

Romney argued he isn't responsible for outsourcing, job losses and bad deals Bain was involved with after Feb. 11, 1999, when he says he left Bain, because he was running the Olympics.

"You can't say to the SEC, 'I was the CEO, chairman and president, but I'm not responsible. I'm not accountable,'" Emanuel said. "That's what he likes you to think. But then he says, 'The reason I should be president is Bain Capital.'"