A new document obtained by Breitbart News undermines another facet of Matt Bevin’s explanations for his signature on a 2008 pro-TARP bailout letter sent from an investment firm he served as president. Bevin is challenging incumbent Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary.
Bevin, arguing his signature on the document was inconsequential, has said that he was legally required to sign the pro-TARP bailout letter by law.
However, other similar documents from the time Bevin was president at the firm do not bear his signature, suggesting a level of personal approval for the pro-TARP letter he did sign – something he has fiercely denied. The revelations add to what has been a difficult few weeks for Bevin as he has tried to explain the document in various ways, largely without success.
Monday, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul added salt to Bevin’s wounds, telling reporters at a campaign stop with McConnell in eastern Kentucky, “I think it hurts any individual if it appears as if their responses to issues aren’t consistent. So the fact that at one point he said he was for TARP but now he’s against TARP, it does hurt credibility.”
Paul’s strong support for McConnell, though, has put him at odds with Tea Party groups who continue to stand by Bevin despite the controversy.
Bevin and Daniel Bandi, a senior official at the firm, both signed the pro-TARP letter that said the bailouts had helped the economy.
Bevin said he was required to sign it by law, but a 2009 letter of the same type – a report to shareholders – was signed only by Bandi, even though Bevin was still president of the firm.
Pure Politics reported that on Tuesday Bevin offered a new explanation for the signature, saying it was digital, as opposed to real. “It wasn’t a signature it was a digital signature… They’re submitted electronically. They always are.”
Later in the day, Bevin told Pure Politics, “I’ve signed many documents as president and CEO as required by law. I signed every single document that we were required to file – every single one of them,” repeating what he told Glenn Beck when the story first broke.
The new document suggests that Bevin’s explanation for his signature on a 2008 Pro-TARP bailout letter sent to investors in a company he headed – that he was required by law to sign the report to shareholders letter contained as item one in a November 2008 N-CSR report filing with the SEC – was incorrect.
Bevin, at the time president of Veracity Funds, signed a report to shareholders letter dated October 28, 2008 – item one of the Veracity Small Cap Values Fund N-CSR semi-annual report for the first half of the fiscal year that ended in February 2009 filed with the SEC in November 2008 – along with Daniel Bandi, the company’s chief financial officer. In that letter, Bevin and Bandi extolled the merits of the 2008 TARP bill. “Don’t call it a bailout,” they wrote.
Bevin’s explanation that he was required by law to sign the report to shareholders letter, however, is disproven by the contents of the company’s report to shareholders letter dated April 10, 2009 – item one of the Veracity Small Cap Values Fund N-CSR annual report for the fiscal year that ended in February 2009 filed with the SEC in May 2009. That letter was signed only by the company’s chief investment officer Daniel Bandi (see page 3) and not by Matt Bevin, who was at the time still the president of Veracity Funds.
Bevin’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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