Joe Soptic - From Obama Campaign Add

POLITICO 44 - Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki acknowledged Thursday that the campaign was no longer pleading ignorance about the story of a man who has appeared in both a super PAC ad and a campaign ad.

"No one is denying he was in one of our campaign ads. He was on a conference call telling his story," Psaki told reporters on Air Force One.

Missouri steelworker Joe Soptic starred in an Obama campaign ad and participated in a conference call with the campaign in May, as POLITICO reported Wednesday. He resurfaced this week in a Priorities USA Action super PAC ad, charging that his wife died of cancer after Mitt Romney's former private equity firm laid him off.

Distancing themselves from the controversial ad, Obama campaign staffers initially denied knowledge of Soptic's story — despite the fact that he was in an Obama campaign ad.

Adviser Robert Gibbs said he didn’t know "specifics," while deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said on CNN: “I don’t know the facts about when Mr. Soptic’s wife got sick or the facts about his health insurance."

And yesterday on Air Force One, Psaki said, "we don’t have any knowledge of the story of the family."

UPDATE: Amanda Henneberg, a spokesperson for the Romney campaign, said this in a statement: "President Obama’s campaign has been caught lying about its knowledge concerning a vicious smear run by his Super PAC. And now, they have doubled down with another dishonorable and dishonest attack. In 2008, candidate Obama said ‘you make a big election about small things’ when you don’t have a record to run on. Since President Obama can’t run on record unemployment, falling incomes, and massive debt, he has decided to run a dirty campaign that is an affront to everything he claims to stand for."

Politico - When President Obama’s aides said they weren’t familiar with former Missouri steelworker Joe Soptic’s life story, all they had to do was check their own campaign archives.

Soptic, laid off from Bain Capital-owned GST Steel, stars in a Priorities USA Action spot this week in which he tells of how his wife died without health insurance after he lost his job. Soptic also appeared, wearing what appears to be an identical shirt, in a May television ad for the Obama campaign.

Asked about the Priorities spot on MSNBC Wednesday morning, Robert Gibbs said he doesn’t “know the specifics” while Stephanie Cutter said on CNN: “I don’t know the facts about when Mr. Soptic’s wife got sick or the facts about his health insurance.”

And Jen Psaki told reporters on Air Force One that “we don't' have any knowledge of the story of the family,” according to Yahoo! News.

But Cutter hosted an Obama campaign conference call in May in which Soptic told reporters the very story featured in the Priorities spot.

Both the campaign and the Priorities USA Action said there was no coordination about Soptic’s appearances. In the campaign’s ad, Soptic speaks only about the plant. In the Priorities spot, he tells the personal story he relayed during the Obama campaign conference call.

“We have no idea when Priorities shot their spot,” an Obama campaign official said. “We’re not allowed to coordinate with them – but we can tell you it wasn’t when we shot ours.”

The aide didn’t answer questions about when the Obama campaign shot its Soptic footage or explain Cutter’s televised statement.

Priorities USA Action senior strategist Bill Burton said the super PAC found shot its Soptic footage at a union hall in early February.

“We didn’t know that he was doing an [Obama campaign] ad,” Burton said.

Soptic did not return phone calls left Wednesday at his home in Independence, Mo. Burton said he could not make Soptic available.

“We spoke today and he said he didn’t want to do anymore interviews,” Burton said. “He felt like his story was out there and it was being told.”

... Salon.com -- which is generally considered a liberal media outlet, thus no friend to Romney -- asked two tax experts whether they thought it was likely that Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. They concluded, "probably not."

The article quoted David Miller, a tax attorney with the firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in New York, saying it’s "highly unlikely" that he paid nothing.

"It would be easier for someone like Steve Jobs to pay zero, as most of his wealth was in company stock, which isn’t taxed until sold and may never be sold," Miller told Salon. The Salon article continued, "But Romney’s arrangement with Bain is different. He would have earned management fees, and when Bain sold the underlying companies that it invested in, Romney would have been subject to tax on his share. 'It’s possible he paid very little in taxes, but I find it hard to believe that he paid none,' Miller said."

Salon also quoted Joshua Kamerman, a lawyer and CPA in New York, who said while it’s theoretically possible, it’s also "preposterous."

"Charitable donations can shield up to only 50 percent of tax liability, while other means can lower the rate," the article said. "But to pay nothing, Romney would have to sustain business operating losses, Kamerman said. The IRS lets people carry over losses for up to 20 years until they make a profit from which to deduct them. But Kamerman said this is almost certainly not the case for Romney."

We asked Lawrence J. White, an economist at the Stern School of Business at New York University, for his view, and he concurred with Miller and Kamerman. "I agree that it's extremely unlikely that Mr. Romney paid no income taxes for 10 years," White said.

Our ruling

Reid has said Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. It was no slip of the tongue. He repeated the claim on at least two more occasions, at one point saying that "the word is out" when in fact it was only Reid who put that "word" out.

Reid has produced no evidence to back up his claim other than attribution to a shadowy anonymous source. Romney has denied the claim, and tax experts back him up, saying that the nature of Romney's investments in Bain make it highly unlikely he would have been able to avoid paying taxes altogether -- especially for 10 years.

Reid has made an extreme claim with nothing solid to back it up. Pants on Fire! {Read It All!!}