Salon.com > Gloria Allred

Court to unseal Romney divorce testimony

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 16:21:00 +0000

A judge has granted the Boston Globe access to sealed testimony that Mitt Romney gave in his friend's 1991 divorce case. The case involves the divorce of Staples founder Tom Stemberg, who has been a Romney surrogate this campaign cycle, and his now-ex-wife Maureen Sullivan Stemberg.

From the Globe's report from before the hearing:

"All documents in the divorce case were impounded, and all parties signed a confidentiality agreement that prevents them from discussing details of the case with the press. The Globe is seeking only Romney’s testimony, which he delivered in June 1991.

At the time of the divorce, Romney was the owner and chief executive of Bain Capital, a private equity firm that invested $650,000 in Staples to help the office supply company open its first store in Brighton in 1986. In total, Bain Capital invested about $2.5 million in Staples and reaped a $13 million profit when the company went public in 1989. Romney sat on the Staples board of directors."

Sorry, America, there is no such thing as “October Surprises”

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 20:30:00 +0000

Mitt Romney campaign surrogate Donald Trump was making some noise recently about some sort of "announcement" he planned to make that would somehow hurt President Barack Obama's reelection efforts. Today, it turned out to be some nonsense related to Trump's pet theory that Obama was secretly not a very good student in college.

Meanwhile, celebrity attorney Gloria Allred promised some juicy revelations that would damage the presidential campaign of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. It is apparently some old testimony from Romney in his friend's divorce trial. What will it reveal? Probably nothing that will cause Romney to lose.

We're in fake-out October Surprise season, and for all their feigned world-weariness, political reporters love it. It would be so magical if some unforeseen event suddenly "shook up" an election in its closing weeks, or else everyone is basically stuck writing the same boring stories about "turnout operations" and "ground games" until Tuesday night.

Sharon Bialek, meet the right-wing hit machine

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:40:00 +0000

One thing was clear from Sharon Bialek's media tour of the past 24 hours: She knew what she was getting herself into.

Bialek, the public face of sexual harassment charges against GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, told CNN's Piers Morgan last night that: "There's going to be a lot of backlash and I'm going to have to suffer through that and I'm sure I'm going to be portrayed as different things. I'm willing to handle it. I'm a tough girl."

On NBC's "Today," she recalled her boyfriend telling her that if she said publicly that Cain made unwelcome advances, "It's gonna be one of those he-said she-said things." But Bialek insisted that the focus belonged on Cain, not her. "It's not about me. I'm not the one running for president." She repeated on every show that she wasn't getting paid and neither was attorney Gloria Allred.