I do think about Al Capone often, believe it or not. lol
So it would have to be for something he did not as a federal employee but for work his company, for instance, did for the federal government. I wonder if any of his community organizing stuff would qualify that way. Trouble is, as long as he was in the country legally he could submit a claim for reimbursement by the feds without it being a false claim.
There was something in there regarding submitting a claim for “approval”; I wonder if anything would work with that.
With Hutch News, I suppose the only real threat to them is if somebody like Issa did do an investigation, since none of the US Attorneys or US AG would do anything about it.
See, that’s where we’re so vulnerable. Law enforcement is directed by political appointees. So it’s crooks telling their buddies to look the other way, and the people can’t do anything about it. That’s my gripe.
“So it would have to be for something he did not as a federal employee but for work his company, for instance, did for the federal government.”
Not necessarily. Take any federal bureaucrat with contracting authority to purchase goods or services using federal funds. Such bureaucrats would be subject to False Claims Act, for example, if they corruptly awarded contracts using favoritism rather than federally established bidding procedures. Or they aided and abetted someone filing false Medicare claims by looking the other way or perhaps even obtained a kickback from such fraudulent claims. In all these cases, federal funds are being used for illegal purposes and the federal official involved has knowingly abetted in this crime.
Obama has drawn a federal paycheck, which would have been the most straightforward way to nab him since a) if he’s not qualified, he surely knew this; and b) there’s no question that he received those federally financed paychecks. But, as I showed earlier, FCA does not apply to federal employee payroll. This means a connection has to be made to Obama’s contracting authority.
This is where it gets dicey. I can’t picture POTUS being the signatory on any federal contract, even for pencils in the Oval Office. It’s too mundane a responsibility, so it’s going to be handled by underlings, I presume. OTOH, no Congress cannot appropriate even a nickel of federal funds without the president’s approval. In that regard, Obama has “contracted” in a broad sense of the term for literally trillions of dollars worth of spending. He’s approved it and if he isn’t constitutionally eligible to hold office, then all such approvals are by definition illegal. Thus, at lower levels of bureaucracy, all derivative contracting decisions are illicit since the bureaucrats are paying for federal purchases that may not have been approved if someone other than Obama were making the decisions. In that sense, Obama is the master gatekeeper of all federal contracting.
I just don’t know whether FCA’s definition of contracting would encompass this type of broader level executive approval. It would seem bizarre that the law could be used to imprison or fine a federal bureaucrat many layers down in the federal bureaucracy, but NOT be able to use FCA to snare corruption at the very highest level. OTOH, the courts might rule there is no need for FCA or any other law to reign in the president since if he behaves corruptly or illegally holds his office, Congress always has the power to impeach, so THAT is the ultimate safeguard.
However, you wouldn’t be trying to prosecute a sitting president. You’d be using FCA to go after other individuals who have aided and abetted this corrupt acquisition of power. So I think FCA provides a plausible shot at circumventing all the barriers that other BC suits have faced in terms of trying to establish standing to sue. FCA gives you standing automatically, so any judicial decision presumably would have to turn on the “facts” of the case. And fact #1 that plaintiffs would have to establish is that Obama may hold office illegally. And in light of Fukino’s clearly provable instances of lying/obfuscation, she cannot be relied upon to prove he has a legitimate BC. Thus, there is reasonable doubt about his eligibility.
In light of that, I would think a court would have to allow subpoena of the BC so that plaintiff can prove definitively that his eligibility is problematic. Fukino can only be convicted IF it can be demonstrated Obama fraudulently holds office. If he doesn’t, then FCA is moot.
I welcome any legal beagles to weigh in and explain where my reasoning has gone astray.