Vercotti: Anyway a week later they came back, said that the cheque had bounced and that I had to see Stephanie.
Interviewer: Stephanie?
Vercotti: Stephanie (takes a drink) I was terrified of her. Everyone was terrified of Stephanie. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Stephanie. Even Dinsdale was frightened of Stephanie.
Interviewer: What did she do?
Vercotti: She used intimation. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire…
Duke:
@delong @amaeryllis Moreover, [Stephanie] Cutter knows that via strong intimation, she made Rom[ney] sched[ule] 5 panicked interviews to deny a nonexistent crime.
— Duke (@DukeStJournal) July 15, 2012
The remarkable thing is that I do not think Stephanie Cutter wanted to accuse Mitt Romney of committing a felony. Her argument was:
The SEC filings say that Romney was in control of and responsible for Bain--sole shareholder, CEO, chairman, and president.
People don't typically lie to the SEC.
There's a conflict between what Romney told the SEC and what the campaign is saying now--that Romney was not in control of and not responsible for Bain.
Believe the SEC filings: Romney was in control, and is responsible.
The word "felony" appears in her argument simply to back up the point that people don't set out to lie to the SEC--it's not healthy.
In this context, however, the word "felony" does not apply. Unless I am very, very misinformed, there are not criminal but civil penalties only for filing erroneous registration statements.
And the truly odd thing is that now the world appears to think that Mitt Romney (i) was in charge of Bain between 1999-2002, and (ii) somehow because he was in charge he committed some sort of felony.
