Posted on 01/31/2010 4:42:58 PM PST by STARWISE
Activists charge that Obama has spent millions to silence them in court. Not exactly, say the government’s lawyers.
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Is President Barack Obama spending millions of dollars to hide the truth about his citizenship?
During Obama's 2008 run for the White House, his campaign and a host of other credible sources repeatedly debunked the conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and was thus ineligible to serve as president.
But this failed to quell the "birther" movement, whose acolytes have filed more than 60 civil lawsuits challenging the president's citizenship. None of these suits have gone anywhere in court.
But birthers say that's because Obama has unleashed a phalanx of powerful lawyers to silence them—spending $1.7 million in the process, according to WorldNetDaily (WND), an enthusiastic online promoter of the birthers' cause.
Given the sheer number of cases, it seems plausible that the president and the government may have been forced to devote real resources to their defense.
But in fact the opposite may be true: The birthers' own copious legal bungling could wind up costing them more than Obama will have to spend defending himself.
The birthers have peppered dozens of state and federal courts around the country with legal challenges—against the president and other government officials and organizations who had some role in allowing Obama's name to be placed on the ballot, including the Federal Election Commission, various state election officials, and the US Supreme Court. Some of the suits, particularly those filed by the movement's leading lady, California lawyer/dentist Orly Taitz, have been headlined by members of the military claiming they've been wrongfully made to serve in foreign wars by an illegitimate commander in chief.
Most recently, birther attorneys have represented car dealers who charge that Obama is a phony president who lacked the authority to order a restructuring of Chrysler that they say cost them their businesses.
WorldNetDaily has noted that FEC filings show that Obama's presidential campaign has paid out more than $1.7 million since the election to the law firm of Perkins Coie. Until recently, that firm was home to Obama's campaign lawyer, and now White House counsel, Robert Bauer—the very same DC lawyer, says WND, who has defended Obama in many of the birther lawsuits.
Ergo, WND concluded, Obama must be devoting that entire $1.7 million to crushing birthers in court. This is a ridiculous claim: Even after an election is over a presidential campaign has plenty of need for lawyers as it winds down operations and meets campaign finance law requirements.
But WND's editors believe they have a smoking gun in a letter Bauer sent on April 3 to John David Hemenway, a DC lawyer representing retired Air Force Colonel Gregory Hollister in a suit against "Barry Soetoro…de facto President in posse." (Some birthers claim Obama is actually an Indonesian citizen who shares his last name with his Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.)
The lawsuit claims that Hollister may be unable to perform his duty to uphold the Constitution if Obama called him out of retirement and ordered him to war, because Obama isn't a natural-born citizen.
A US District Court judge dismissed the "frivolous" case and reprimanded the 83-year-old lawyer for filing it. Nonetheless, Hemenway appealed, prompting Bauer to send him a letter warning that Obama would seek sanctions if he pursued the matter.
WND and many of its readers apparently believe this letter proves that Obama has teams of expensive lawyers working round the clock to stomp out the suits and intimidate the underdog plaintiffs and their attorneys.
The White House never responded to WND's questions about the legal fees, and Bauer didn't respond to Mother Jones. But the birthers' lawsuits don't exactly seem to be requiring Obama's lawyers—government or private—to burn the midnight oil.
Roger West, an assistant US attorney in the central district of California, represented the government in a lawsuit brought by Taitz on behalf of perennial presidential candidate Alan Keyes, asking the court to require that Obama prove he is a natural-born citizen.
The case has dragged on for more than a year, mostly because Taitz, a graduate of an online, unaccredited law school, failed to serve the defendants. Judge David O. Carter dismissed the suit in October for a host of reasons, but Taitz has appealed.
Yet West says that far from bleeding his office, Taitz and her co-counsel Gary Kreep have assembled such a weak case that he hasn't had to spend much time on it.
"I filed one motion that didn't take too long, we've had two hearings and that's it," he says. "It's not like we've devoted some sort of task force to this."
Army Major Rebecca Ausprung handled two of the birther cases against the Department of the Army that disputed Obama's authority as commander in chief to order soldiers to war. Ausprung says she spent a few hours drafting motions and doing research, and she did have to make three short trips to Georgia from Arlington, Virginia.
She prevailed in both cases. "The monetary cost to the government in defending these two cases was extremely minimal," she says.
Or consider a case filed by one of the most prolific birther litigants, Philip J. Berg, that went all the way up to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. In November the court dismissed the appeal and ordered Berg to pay the legal costs for the defendants, which included the Federal Election Commission.
Here was the government's big chance to recoup its millions. But when the FEC submitted its bill, the grand total came to $20.40. This doesn't include the cost of the time government lawyers spent writing briefs and appearing in court.
Yet it's clear that as much of a nuisance as these suits are for the government, that's all they are: a nuisance.
In fact, the plaintiffs may be spending far more time and money on these cases than Obama or the government is, in part because of their failure to abide by basic court procedures.
In one of the Georgia cases Ausprung handled, a federal judge sanctioned Taitz in October for $20,000 for, among other things, pursuing a case long after a judge had dismissed it and her own client had discharged her. Taitz has refused to pay the fine.
So far, judges have been remarkably tolerant of the birthers' shenanigans—despite being handed abundant opportunities to throw their petitions out of court. In one case, Taitz allegedly encouraged supporters to contact the judge by phone and mail to lobby for her cause—a glaring ethics violation that he chose to ignore.
Another of her cases only went forward because the federal judge basically begged the defendants to let Taitz serve them—the first step in any lawsuit, but one that Taitz had neglected to take for about seven months.
The judges' written opinions suggest that by giving the birthers' cases a full airing, they hope to put some of the most outrageous allegations to rest.
But not only have the birthers shown little gratitude to the judges who have indulged them, their court losses have also fueled the conspiracy theories that the judges had hoped to extinguish.
Taitz accused US District Judge Clay Land of having improperly discussed one of her cases with Attorney General Eric Holder, and submitted a sworn eyewitness account describing a clandestine meeting in a Columbus, Georgia, coffee shop between the judge and a man with a "trim upper lip mustache, not large of stature and general olive complexion"—whom the source naturally assumed to be the attorney general.
On the day in question, however, Holder was making a public appearance 2,000 miles away in Los Angeles. Expect the birthers' theories to become even more far-fetched as their legal endeavors continue to fail.
How about you go on record with your theory, while you’re at it.
No, it would not.
The Birther argument is two-fold.
Part one is that he was not born in the US.
Part two is that he is not born of two US citizens (under their completely made-up theory of what a natural born citizen is). Producing a birth certificate would do nothing to end discussion on part two of their theory. And every major birther seems to subscribe to this theory.
So, if the birth certificate says he was born in Hawaii to a Kenyan and an American, do the birthers go away? Of course not.
Actually there is a third rail: the massive file of hidden from the public documents referencing his life as an Indonesia, college entry records, grades, tuition paid by whom (we know some of that came from Islamic sources), and the record of his leagl names.
A majority of Obama eligibility lawsuits do not even name Obama as the defendant. For example, of the 7 lawsuits that made it to the US Supreme Court for justices’ conference there was: (1) Berg v Obama (Obama’s lawyers chose not to submit a brief to Justice Souter); (2)Craig v US (did not name Obama as defendant); (3)Donofrio v Wells (did not name Obama as defendant); (4)Herbert v Obama et. al (Obama presented no defense in the Federal Court for Middle Florida or at the US Supreme Court); (5)Lightfoot v Bowen (Obama not named as a defendant); (6)Schneller v Cortes (Obama not named as a defendant); and (7)Wrotnowski v. Bysiewicz (Obama not named as a defendant).
There is no legal expense when you are not named as a defendant.
As far as I can tell, Obama has had attorneys for 3 out of 64 eligibility lawsuits: Berg v Obama, Holliser v Soetoro and Keyes v Bowen. Since none of these lawsuits has gone to trial and have been dismissed, the legal expenses are minimal.
Once the Chief Justice swore Barack Obama in, the Justice Department handles all legal issues for the president. There appear to be an additional seven lawsuits in which Justice Department attorneys filed briefs.
When somebody sues you, you have to respond.
But even at the state court level, most of the suits do not name Obama personally. A few more examples of Obama eligibility suits that do not name Obama as the defendant: Ankeney et. al v Mitch Daniels, the Governor of Indiana (Strange bedfellows suit: the Republican Attorney General of Indiana defended the Governor and Obama); Beverly v FEC; Brockhousen v Andrade; Broe v Reed; Connerat v Browning; Constitution Party v Lingle, The Governor of Hawaii; Cook v Good, Marquis v Reed...on and on I could go...
If I had to guess, I would think the entire Obama birther legal bill is less than $10,000 and most of that is probably travel costs for DOJ attorneys. (And travel/coffee costs for the Attorney General who to fly from California to Georgia in order to “fix” one of the cases...in a coffee shop).
All of the cases mentioned in the article were filed after Obama was sworn in. The U.S. Attorney's Office represents the president in any civil matters.
I don’t understand why people are so hung up on how he afforded college.
I attended a school with a total cost in the $28,0000 range and my parents were probably making about $65,000 combined then. I finished after four years with somewhere in the neighborhood of $10K in student loans - or what it would have cost me to buy a Hyundai back then.
This will sound crazy, but if you are poor, it is much cheaper to go to an expensive private school than to a more reasonable private school.
Obama - as a strong minority candidate duringe the height of affirmative action in admissions and financial aid offices - probably had people begging for the opportunity to give him money.
Bump.
Bump post #6.
Where is the transparency, Mr President?
Give him money as a foregin student or as an affirmative action black kid? You see, his legal name when his mother was seeking a divorce from Mister Soetoro was Barry Soetoro and she obtained her divorce in the second year of Barry attending Occidental college. Has he ever changed his name legally to Barack Hussein Obama? and By what name/nationality did he obtain college funding from al Mansour the radical black islamacists?
Since the work to bury his records had to have started as far back as 2007, to calculate the real cost of fighting exposure one would need to include the money spent on detectives, lawyers, operatives, literally around the world. And add to that, the graft sent to places like Indonesia to get their support in hiding his records from anyone looking.
Hey guys, did the staff meeting just let out??? or did you all just come out of the same head together????
I get this image of a bunch of obamanoids sitting in a room in the basement of a Washington office building, reading from a chart of responses wrapped on their wrist, like a quarterback in a huddle.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office represents the president in any civil matters.
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Including cases that were begun before the election ?
There are virtually no financial aid programs for foreign students, and lots of programs for black American students. If you can show otherwise, have at it.
You see, his legal name when his mother was seeking a divorce from Mister Soetoro was Barry Soetoro
I assume you have some actual evidence of this, right? I mean, something more than an old school ledger?
Loosen your kneepads, bubba. When you ‘assume’ it shows you’re full of donkey meat.
I’ll take that as your concession, then.
Whatever, obamanoid.
Your tinfoil hat must be extra tight today, birther.
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