Mitt Romney Ad Accuses President Obama Of Spreading Dishonest Attacks

Mitt Romney's campaign released a new ad on Thursday accusing President Barack Obama of running a dishonest campaign and spreading lies about Romney as he did about Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary.

"When a president doesn’t tell the truth, how can we trust him to lead?" asks the narrator in the ad, which once again charges that the Obama campaign's attacks on Romney's outsourcing record are "misleading, unfair and untrue."

The ad, called "No Evidence," also invokes Hillary Clinton saying "shame on you, Barack Obama" while running for the Democratic nomination in 2008, a tactic the Romney campaign employed in a previous ad released last month.

The spot's primary goal is to dispel a Washington Post report that pegged Romney and his private equity firm Bain Capital as pioneers in the outsourcing movement. The ad cites a FactCheck.org article released in late June that found "no evidence" linking the presumptive Republican nominee to shipping jobs overseas during his tenure at Bain. The Obama campaign tried to refute these findings in a six-page letter to the independent website, but FactCheck.org has stood by its assessment.

As the Romney campaign continues to accuse Team Obama of spreading lies, a Boston Globe report published on Thursday has fueled an uproar around the timing of Romney's departure from Bain Capital. Though the article's findings are not entirely new, the SEC filings the Globe cites -- indicating that Romney may have left Bain Capital in 2002 rather than 1999, as he has insisted throughout his campaign -- seem to dispute the evidence the Romney campaign presents in its ad to defend itself against the outsourcing attacks.

This article was updated to mention the Boston Globe report.