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Globe: 'Evidence mounts' of Bain ties

The Boston Globe is not backing down.

Following Mitt Romney's television blitz on Friday, in which he dismissed the assertion that he stayed at Bain Capital past February 1999, the Globe is out with a new report pointing to more regulatory filings, reports and quotes from the candidate that suggest he was involved with the firm past that time:

"Romney’s own words, along with other documentary evidence, appear to challenge his campaign’s assertion in a recent financial disclosure that Romney had “retired” from Bain in 1999 and “since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney 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," the Globe report states.

(Also on POLITICO: Ed Gillespie says Bain attacks are 'working')

The report, which was blasted out to reporters late Saturday by the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action, is further evidence -- if any was needed -- that both the media and Team Obama intend to keep the issue at the top of the news cycle well into next week, if not longer.

Of all the new evidence that has come to light in the last 48 hours, Romney's own quotes and those from a former lawyer before the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission may prove to be the most problematic. Via the Globe:

“When I left my employer in Massachusetts in February of 1999 to accept the Olympic assignment,” Romney testified before the state Ballot Law Commission on June 17, 2002, “I left on the basis of a leave of absence, indicating that I, by virtue of that title, would return at the end of the Olympics to my employment at Bain Capital, but subsequently decided not to do so and entered into a departure agreement with my former partners.” Romney’s lawyer at the hearing said that Romney’s work in the private sector continued unbroken while he ran the Olympics. “He succeeded in that three-year period in restoring confidence in the Olympic Games, closing that disastrous deficit and staging one of the most successful Olympic Games ever to occur on US soil,” said Peter L. Ebb from Ropes & Gray. “Now while all that was going on, very much in the public eye, what happened to his private and public ties to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? And the answer is they continued unabated just as they had.” The Romney campaign declined to comment on the record about whether the business trips and board meetings were related to Bain Capital obligations.

Romney went before the Commission in 2002 in order to defend his residency in Massachusetts and thus, his right to be on the ballot. The Commission ruled in Romney’s favor, though it also stated that Romney left Bain on January 1, 1999 to run the Olympic games.