FactCheck hits back at Obama's objections

First FactCheck.org said President Obama's attacks on Mitt Romney's work Bain Capital and his alleged "outsourcing" of jobs were not accurate and misleading. Then Obama's campaign hit back with more ads continuing along these lines. Now, FactCheck is back at it, defending their analysis of the president's misleading ads:

The Obama campaign complains that we got a key fact wrong in our June 29 article, “Obama’s ‘Outsourcer’ Overreach.” We strongly disagree. We find the Obama campaign’s evidence to be weak or non-existent, and contrary to statements Romney has made on official disclosure forms under pain of federal prosecution.

The Obama complaint claims we erred in saying Mitt Romney gave up active management of Bain Capital in early 1999 to run the 2002 Winter Olympics, insisting we were then wrong in saying Romney was not responsible for shipping U.S. jobs overseas.

In fact, if the Obama campaign were correct, Romney would be guilty of a federal felony by certifying on federal financial disclosure forms that he left active management of Bain Capital in February 1999.

And after reviewing evidence cited by the Obama campaign, we reaffirm our conclusion that Romney left the helm of Bain Capital when he took a leave of absence in 1999 to run the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics – as he has said repeatedly — and never returned to active management. The Obama campaign’s recent ads thus mislead when they point to investments made by Bain, as well as management decisions made by companies in which Bain invested, after that time.

The Obama campaign’s objections are contained in a six-page letter sent to us (and  — without notice to us — to other news organizations as well). It cobbles together selective news snippets and irrelevant securities documents in an attempt to show that Romney was still running Bain Capital on a part-time basis while he was also running the Olympics committee.

In a nutshell, the Obama campaign is all wet on this point.