Romney to Gingrich: Release Freddie Mac Report - East Idaho News
News

Romney to Gingrich: Release Freddie Mac Report

  Published at

Getty 120911 NewtGingrich?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1327172193442Richard Ellis/Getty Images(GREENVILLE, S.C.) — Mitt Romney for the first time called on former Speaker Newt Gingrich on Saturday to release the reports he wrote for Freddie Mac.

“Speaker Gingrich worked for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By the way, didn’t he say he was going to release information about his relationship there?” Romney asked at a drop-by event at his campaign headquarters in Greenville. “Let’s see what report he wrote for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, what the conclusions were and what the contract looked like. I thought he said he was going to do that. And let’s have him describe his relationships in Washington.”

Romney said Gingrich, who has maintained that he was a “historian” for the mortgage lender during the 2000s despite receiving $1.6 million over nine years in consulting fees should release the reports.

“He also said that he was one of the authors of the Reagan revolution economically and created these jobs. Now that we’ve looked at the Reagan diaries and seen he’s mentioned only once and in a way where Reagan said he was wrong, I’d like to see what he actually told Freddie Mac,” Romney said. “Don’t you think we ought to see it? This is a big issue. We’ve got Washington insider talking about Freddie Mac, let’s see what his report was to Freddie Mac, what he said to them, what advice he gave them,” said Romney.

Romney’s request comes as he has spent the week explaining why he will not release his tax returns until April, an issue that South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley brought up during the event on Saturday morning.

“All this issue about the tax returns, he’s doing it, he’s going to do it in April, he’s going to show ’em, and what we’re going to see is he was successful. We’re going to see that he paid on time,” Haley said.

Romney also said he wished he’d been invited to join the conference call President Obama hosted last night with donors to solicit ideas for his State of the Union address.

“I wasn’t invited on the call, but it was unfortunate, because I would have had a lot to say,” Romney said. “First, I would have told him, isn’t it time to actually put together a plan to create jobs in America?”

When a woman nearby yelled something about Obama’s “cash for clunkers” program, Romney turned her remark into a new catch phrase.

“Yeah, that’s right, he had a plan to get the whole economy going, cash for clunkers,” Romney replied. “So we’re going to, that’s not a bad idea, Obama is the clunker. We don’t need cash to get rid of that clunker, we just need votes.”

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

SUBMIT A CORRECTION