Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney urged Newt Gingrich to return more than $1.6 million he made consulting for Freddie Mac, one of the two government-sponsored enterprises caught up in the housing meltdown.
"He was in the business of connecting folks with government," Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, said of Gingrich in a Fox News interview Monday as both campaigned in New Hampshire. "It's very different than the private sector."
Gingrich, a former House speaker, has said he never lobbied for Freddie Mac and described his work there as that of a historian.
"That would make him the highest paid historian in history," said Romney, in the interview from the Chez Vachon diner in Manchester, N.H.
Gingrich fired back by criticizing Romney's years at the Boston private-equity firm Bain Capital LLC.
