Let's cut to the chase here. Mitt's trusts are not blind -- not in the way they are set up, not in the way they are managed, and certainly not as defined by Federal Government standards.
Let's cue up the Government rules first. 5 C.F.R. § 2634.406 Independent trustees says the following about the trustee of an acceptable blind trust for an Executive Branch employee:
(3) Requirements. No eligible entity shall be determined to be an independent trustee under this section unless:
(i) That entity is independent of and unassociated with any interested party so that it cannot be controlled or influenced in the administration of the trust by any interested party; and
(ii) That entity is not and has not been affiliated with any interested party, and is not a partner of, or involved in any joint venture or other investment or business with, any interested party; and
(iii) Any director, officer, or employee of such entity:
(A) Is independent of and unassociated with any interested party so that such director, officer, or employee cannot be controlled or influenced in the administration of the trust by any interested party;
(B) Is not and has not been employed by any interested party, not served as a director, officer, or employee of any organization affiliated with any interested party, and is not and has not been a partner of, or involved in any joint venture or other investment with, any interested party; and
(C) Is not a relative of any interested party.
Read about Mitt's Trustee,
R. Bradford Malt, below, and a possible reason for Mitt's obfuscations, as well as the comments of a well-known politician about the supposed "blindness" of the trusts.
Malt, a lanky 57-year-old with a penchant for pulling office pranks, has been at Romney’s side at pivotal moments in his career for the past two decades - whether it was saving Romney’s old consulting firm from bankruptcy, helping him stay on the state election ballot in 2002, or defending his investments in his current run for president. Malt has made investment decisions for Romney since 2003, when Romney became governor and put his money into a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest.
Find me a way to square the Government ethics rules for a Trustee with the paragraph above. Yep. You can't. Morevover, Malt, as Trustee, has been helpful to Mitt's political survival, and it's a matter of record:
In early 2010, as Romney advanced toward a second presidential campaign, Malt decided to close the $3 million UBS account he set up in Switzerland seven years earlier, realizing it could become a political issue. In 2009, the US government sued UBS to obtain the names of thousands of Americans who secretly held billions of dollars in Swiss accounts.
Then there's the investment by Anne Romney's blind trust in Solamere, Tagg's investment firm. That doesn't sound very blind, right? Have we forgotten that it's probably
worse than blind?
All but one of the firm’s 11 employees, however, had come from the Charlotte office of Stanford Financial Group, which federal officials had closed earlier that year for selling sham certificates of deposit financed through a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. Solamere’s executives said that Solamere Advisors’ employees had been with Stanford only briefly and knew nothing about the fraud.
Smoke, meet fire. Might be a good reason not to release tax returns, or to keep saying you have a blind trust, even though you've got one eye open.
Finally, about the politician who presciently pointed out that Mitt's trusts weren't exactly blind:
The blind trust does NOT meet the exacting 'federal blind trust' standard.
That was a quote supplied to ABC News by a campaign official for Willard Mitt Romney.