On a day of bitter exchanges, Romney, the Republican hopeful, attacked Obama for his campaign's negative advertising blitz undermining the former management consultant's career.
Mitt Romney called Barack Obama a liar on Thursday as the smouldering US presidential election campaign finally caught fire.
On a day of bitter exchanges, Romney, the Republican hopeful, attacked Obama for his campaign's negative advertising blitz undermining the former management consultant's career.
"It's time to set the record straight about Mitt's record and dispel Obama's lies," the Romney campaign said.
"When a president doesn't tell the truth, how can we trust him to lead?" said a television advertisement accusing Obama of dishonesty over repeated claims that Romney was a profiteer responsible for outsourcing jobs to China while at the helm of Bain Capital.
The fightback from Romney, by far the toughest attacks of the election campaign so far, began after several prominent Republicans and businessmen, including Rupert Murdoch, had urged the Republican campaign to get on the offensive against Obama.
Hours after the advert was released, the Obama team accused Romney of lying himself about when he stopped working for Bain Capital.
Romney has long contended that he stopped working at the Boston-based venture capital firm in 1999 to go and rescue the Salt Lake City winter Olympics. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), however, show Romney was nominally in control of Bain Capital until 2002.
The Obama campaign has attacked several Bain Capital deals that took place after 1999, blaming Romney for outsourcing jobs and causing lay-offs, charges that two independent fact-checking groups have agreed are unfair or misleading.
"Governor Romney left Bain Capital in February of 1999 to run the Olympics and had no input on investments or management of companies after that point," said Andrea Saul, the Romney campaign spokesperson.
Obama campaign leaders said the discrepancy between when Romney actually left Bain and his official position at the company was another example of their opponent's "penchant for secrecy".
Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Obama, said that Romney should not be allowed to have it both ways over the date when he quit Bain Capital. "Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC - which is a felony - or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people, to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments," she said.
"And if that's the case, and he was lying to the American people, that's a real character and trust issue that the American people need to take very seriously."
The Obama campaign has mounted a full-frontal attack on Romney's record at Bain in an attempt to undermine one of the former Massachusetts governor's key claims that, as a turnaround CEO, he can restore job growth in America.
Recent polls have shown that the Bain attacks appear to be having an impact with voters, perhaps pricking Romney into responding. "They say in politics, if you're responding, you're losing," Romney said on Fox News when asked about his decision to hit back without rebutting specific charges in the Obama campaign advertisements.
Potentially far more damaging than the dispute over Bain Capital timings, however, are attacks on Romney's vast wealth and his use of Swiss bank accounts and investment vehicles in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
Romney is under pressure from the Obama campaign to release previous tax returns having thus far only released his filing for 2010, with a promise to show his 2011 return later this year.
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