Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Freddie Mac Contract: What is Newt Gingrich Hiding?

Sounds like he has something to hide:

Newt Gingrich’s consulting firm yesterday released a copy of its 2006 contract with Freddie Mac (FMCC), which covers just one year of his multiple years of service and documents only $300,000 of the $1.6 million he received from the mortgage company.

The Republican hopeful’s first contract -- spanning 1999 to 2002 and worth between $1 million and $1.2 million, according to two people familiar with the agreement -- wasn’t released because officials at the Center for Health Transformation can’t find it, said Susan Meyers, a center spokeswoman who works for the Gingrich campaign. The 2006 contract also applied to 2007, she said, meaning the total value of that contract was $600,000.

“We’re not even sure we signed anything for 2007,” said Meyers.

[...]“Why isn’t Speaker Gingrich disclosing the full extent of his relationship with Freddie Mac?” said Brian Jones, a spokesman for the Romney campaign. “Ultimately this disclosure raises more questions than it actually does answer.”

[...]Surrogates for both candidates traded jabs over Gingrich’s work for Freddie Mac yesterday.

Former Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Florida House Speaker-designate Will Weatherford said in a Romney-arranged conference call with reporters that Gingrich needed to provide “transparency” about his work for Freddie Mac.

“We don’t have insight or transparency into what he actually did,” Pawlenty said. He called Gingrich’s claims that lawyers are holding up the release of the contracts “B.S.” and “just nonsense.”

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