Today we have confirmation that Mitt Romney has been lying to the public about when he left his job at Bain Capital: Romney’s Bain Story Is Falling Apart.

Despite Mitt Romney’s claims that he left Bain Capital in 1999, Securities and Exchange Commission documents show that Romney was still listed as the owner of the company in 2002, three years later. The documents, reported on today by the Boston Globe, contradict Romney’s claims that he was not running Bain when it was investing in companies that were moving jobs overseas. The Globe quotes a Romney adviser who acknowledges that the campaign’s claims regarding Romney’s lack of involvement “do not square with common sense.”

The charge that Romney moved jobs overseas while running Bain has been central to the Obama campaign’s attacks on Romney. Until now, fact-checkers like the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler have described the Obama campaign’s claims as misleading because of Romney’s assertion that he stopped managing Bain in 1999. However, Mother Jones’ David Corn reported Wednesday that Bain invested in companies that outsourced jobs prior to the time Romney says he left, and the documents cited by the Globe show that Romney was still listed as an executive at Bain during the time the Obama campaign accuses the company of outsourcing jobs.

The website Factcheck.org called the Obama campaign’s claims “weak,” stating that if they were true, Romney might have committed a felony by making false statements in his financial disclosure forms where he stated that he “has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.” A Romney spokesperson told Politico’s Dylan Byers that Romney had not committed a crime.

Related:
#Romney Stayed Longer at Bain

Also see:
Government Documents Indicate Mitt Romney Continued at Bain After Date When He Says He Left - the Boston Globe

Talking Points Memo has discovered more SEC filings in which Romney describes himself as CEO and “Managing Director” of Bain Capital in 2000 and 2001: No, Romney Didn’t Leave Bain in 1999.

This isn’t just about outsourcing; Romney has another big reason to want to obfuscate his association with Bain after 1999: Business Insider:

Beyond determining whether these statements are accurate—or whether Bain misled the SEC or Romney has been misleading the public—the reason this issue is important is that Romney wants to disavow responsibility for anything Bain or Bain companies did after early 1999.

And one of the things that Bain did after early 1999, as Dan Primack of Fortune points out, is invest in a company called Stericycle whose services included the disposal of aborted fetuses.

For obvious reasons, an investment in a company that performed this service might hurt Romney’s standing with the right-to-life voters in the Republican party, even though Romney was pro-choice at the time the investment was made.