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Gawker Releases Huge Cache of Romney Financial Documents

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Killgore Trout8/23/2012 11:05:44 am PDT

CNN:Gawker’s worthless ‘Bain files

Gawker today published what it’s calling The Bain Files, hundreds of pages of audited financials and private placement memoranda for old Bain Capital funds. Let me save you some time: There is nothing in there that will inform your opinion of Mitt Romney.

How do I know? Because I saw many of the exact same documents months ago, after requesting them from a Bain Capital investor. What I quickly learned was that there was little of interest, except perhaps for private equity geeks who want to know exactly how much Bain paid for a particular company back in 2006.

I totally understand why a stack of papers marked “confidential” seems exciting, particularly for those without a deep understanding of private equity. And I’m not taking any position on if Romney did or didn’t duck taxes at some point, either related or unrelated to Bain holdings. All I’m saying is that Gawker has posted tons of smoke without any fire.

That didn’t take long.