Unexpected
turn in eligibility case: 'Put it on record!'
'This judge can't get out; if he screws
around, he's violating law'
The attorney in a publicized challenge to Barack Obama’s
eligibility to be president told WND the Florida case took an unexpected turn
in court yesterday, one he says “pulled the rug out” from Obama’s lawyers and
should force a quick answer from the judge.
Attorney Larry Klayman told WND he had expected an “uneventful”
hearing in the ongoing case, which returned before Judge Terry Lewis yesterday,
but instead found a legal tangle that he believes means Lewis will “have to
make a decision, have to put it on record.”
Klayman originally filed the challenge to Obama’s eligibility
for the ballot on behalf of Michael Voeltz, who identifies himself as “a
registered member of the Democratic Party, voter and taxpayer in Broward
County.”
As WND reported, however, attorneys
representing Obama at the case’s main hearing, which was livestreamed by WND,
argued that the Florida presidential preference primary, which listed Obama as
the only Democrat nominee, didn’t make him the party’s nominee for president. They
urged Lewis to decide that Obama is not yet the Democratic nominee for
president and therefore ignore evidence challenging his eligibility.
But Klayman told WND yesterday that Florida law is unique in
that it gives the average voter “much greater freedom to challenge eligibility
and fraud than most other states.”
Florida law permits filing for “declaratory relief” at any time,
Klayman said, a move that would force a judge to rule on the facts of the case
even before a decision on whether to compel some legal action. In other words,
in the Voeltz case, instead of waiting until the nominating convention – which
Klayman called a “shell game” Obama attorneys are playing to put off the issue
–Lewis would be pushed to make a declaration on Obama’s eligibility “whether
nominated or not.”
“Lewis would have to reach a decision; he would have to put it
on record,” Klayman said. “By amending for declaratory relief, we’re pulling
the rug right out from Obama and the Florida secretary of state.”
Klayman told WND Obama’s lawyers immediately went into a
tailspin and filed to have the amendment for declaratory relief stricken, which
the judge granted, arguing he wanted to wait to issue a formal decision in the
case.
But Klayman said his team is willing to file a stand-alone
complaint for declaratory relief with Lewis as soon as next week and “pull the
rug out from under him, too.”
“This judge can’t get out from under his legal requirement,”
Klayman said. “If he screws around, he’s violating law.”
In hundreds of cases filed challenging Obama’s eligibility, the
full range of questions – from Obama’s birth records, charged by some as
fraudulent, to the Constitution’s meaning of “natural born citizen” – have
never been ruled upon, dismissed typically on questions of who has “standing”
to bring the challenge.
Klayman, however, told WND, “It doesn’t matter how Lewis rules,
the losing side will appeal, and this case is going up, maybe all the way to
the Supreme Court.”
Still, he said, “I want Lewis to address the issue of
eligibility and create a record, so we can take it up before the election. I’m
still confident, hopeful that will happen.”
Following the case’s first hearing, the judge said he would
review the law, but he had pointed questions for both sides.
For example, When Klayman noted the Founding Fathers established
the natural-born citizen requirement because they wanted to avoid foreign
influence on a president from a non-citizen parent, Lewis countered by posing a
hypothetical situation in which a candidate’s two U.S.-citizen parents later
emigrate to Israel.
Klayman said the Founding Fathers’ attempt to avoid a conflict
of interest in the Oval Office did not include every possible scenario.
The judge asked whether the Democratic Party, as a private
group, had a right to choose a nominee, even if that person was ineligible.
Lewis questioned a citation by Obama’s attorneys of a Florida
law that suggests when only one person is on the ballot, that person
automatically becomes the nominee. He told the attorneys he would review the
details of the law.
The arguments by Obama’s attorneys reflected their request that
the judge simply dismiss the case because they claim a sitting president chosen
by his party at multiple levels is not yet officially the nominee.
Klayman accused the Obama attorneys trying to delay the issue,
as numerous courts did in 2008 until the election was over and Obama was
inaugurated.
The judge could remove Obama’s name from the November ballot in
Florida, a crucial swing state, should he determine that the Constitution’s
requirement that a president be a “natural born citizen” can be applied at the
primary level.
Klayman told WND that during a hearing last month on discovery
issues in the case, Lewis noted that the plaintiff’s brief cited U.S. Supreme
Court case Minor v. Happersett from 1875 defining “natural born citizen” as the
offspring of two citizens of the nation, while the Obama campaign’s arguments
provided no citations.
Defining the term is critical. Such a step has not been reached
in any of the more than 100 legal cases that have been brought over Obama’s
eligibility.
The U.S. Constitution’s “natural born citizen” requirement is
not imposed on other federal officials. The writings of the Founders indicate
the requirement was meant to ensure that no person who had divided loyalties
would serve as commander in chief.
Klayman has argued that since Obama, by his own admission, was
not born to two citizen parents, he is not a “natural born citizen” and,
therefore, is ineligible to be a candidate on the state’s election ballot.
Florida’s election statutes provide broad protections for voters
to ensure that the integrity of the election system is beyond reproach. One of
the laws allows voters to challenge the nomination of a candidate who is not
eligible for the office he is seeking.
WND earlier
reported on the case, which raises some of the same issues that have
been raised in other state ballot challenges. Specifically it alleges:
On or about April 2011, only after years into his presidency,
and under media and political pressure, Barack Hussein Obama published on the
Internet an electronic version of a purported birth certificate alleging his
birth in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961, to American citizen mother,
Stanley Ann Dunham, and Kenyan British subject father, Barack Obama Senior.
There is credible evidence indicating that this electronically
produced birth certificate is entirely fraudulent or otherwise altered. No
physical, paper copy of the actual long form birth certificate has been
produced in order to definitively establish Barack Hussein Obama’s birth within
the United States.
The action follows by weeks the release of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s
investigation into Obama’s eligibility. The investigation by professional law
enforcement officers working on a volunteer basis for Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse
found probable cause that Obama’s birth certificate was forged and fraudulently
presented as a genuine document.
The plaintiff has submitted affidavits from Arpaio and others to
support the claim.
The complaint explains that even if Obama was born within the
United States, he is still not a “natural-born citizen” as required by the U.S.
Constitution. That’s because his father was born in the British Colony of Kenya
on June 18, 1936, making him a British subject, according to the British
Nationality Act of 1948.
A case filing explains: “No physical, paper copy of defendant
Obama’s birth certificate has been presented to establish his eligibility. …
Defendant Obama has electronically produced a copy of what he purports to be
his ‘birth certificate.’ Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that the
electronically produced birth certificate is entirely fraudulent or otherwise
altered.”
When asked by Judge Lewis, Klayman confirmed he could add to the
complaint details of the evidence Obama was not born in the U.S.
Obama’s attorneys told the judge that other courts have decided
that courts should not make such decisions and the process is better handled by
Congress. They said state courts especially are not suited to making a decision
on the eligibility of Obama.
“They are precluded from judging the qualifications of
candidates for president of the United States,” the Obama attorneys said.
But Klayman pleaded with the judge to decide the issue, because
a determination made after the election could negate Florida’s vote.
“Florida has a special duty not just on behalf of the citizens
of Florida but on behalf of the United States,” he said.
Klayman referred to a recent Obama order to underscore the
significance of the Founders’ desire that the president not have divided
loyalties or “not even a hint of foreign influence.”
“Just a few days ago, he issued an executive order … which in
effect allows illegal alien students who came into this country … to remain in this
country. … The president’s own father was in fact here on a student visa and
ultimately was deported because that visa expired.”
Klayman reiterated the Supreme Court’s Minor v. Happersett
definition of “natural born citizen” as a person born in the country of two
citizen parents.
“The point is this, your honor,” said Klayman. “The president is
not like everybody else. If that was the case the framers would have said
‘citizens’ [can be president.]”
He accused Obama’s attorneys of trying to “push the issue down
the road” until the legal process would fail due to lack of time.
