Principal Romney supporter under investigation for money laundering and bribery

Embracing Sheldon Adelson

By THOMAS B. EDSALL, NYT

There are two things that set Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign apart: his caution and his secretiveness.

The presumptive Republican nominee refuses to release his pre-2010 tax returns, will not identify his major fundraisers and bundlers and wiped all computer records of staff emails clean at the end of his term as governor of Massachusetts in 2006.

Romney’s rationale is that material like this could be used by the Obama campaign to discredit him. In an interview published a few weeks ago, Romney told National Review:

In the political environment that exists today, the opposition research of the Obama campaign is looking for anything they can use to distract from the failure of the president to reignite our economy. And I’m simply not enthusiastic about giving them hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort, and lie about.

(More here.)