At a town hall event Wednesday, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney dismissed a question about the $1 million donation to his super PAC by a short-lived company, saying there was “no harm, no foul.”
In April, the company W Spann LLC made a million-dollar donation to the pro-Romney Restore Our Future super PAC. In July and two weeks before Restore Our Future made its first annual campaign filing, W Spann dissolved as a corporate entity. (RELATED: Perry responds to Republican critics, snipes at Romney)
Campaign watchdogs jumped on the story, saying W Spann was little more than a shell company created to circumvent campaign finance laws. Ed Conrad, a former top executive at Bain Capital — which was founded in part by Romney — later came forward as the creator of the company.
At the town hall in Lebanon, New Hampshire, Romney said Conrad scrapped plans to donate to other candidates, so he only donated to Romney’s PAC and then dissolved the company.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: “I did hear that there was a company formed which gave your campaign a million dollars. Do you remember this, a few weeks ago? So, can you explain that?”
MITT ROMNEY: “Yeah, there’s a guy named Ed Conard, who had a company who was gonna give to a bunch of candidates and decided not to, and gave a million dollars to a PAC that supports me and said ‘Oh it’s me.’ So yeah, well there’s no need for him to have the company if he’s not going to give to other candidates. So he gave to me. He’s given to me before, one of my partners, so it’s not hidden. It’s all out in the open.”
AUDIENCE MEMBER: “See there’s the spirit of something, and then there’s the legalities of something. And it just seems that this company was formed just in relation to the Supreme Court ruling to give money to your campaign and then dissolve itself.”
MITT ROMNEY: “And, and given the fact that, that — you make the, yeah, it was a company you say was acting as a person, that may well be. You can take it up with him. But there’s actually, given the fact that he said, ‘Oh, well it’s me,’ I don’t think there was, if you will, no harm, no foul.”
Conrad did come forward, but only after two complaints were filed with the Federal Elections Commission and the Department of Justice.