I think this "de facto" argument loses steam at the phrase "No Person" in the eligibility requirements from Article two, section one.
"” No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
"No person" does not leave room for "de facto" or anything else unless within the text of an Amendment to the Constitution itself. I personally believe that we have been stuck at section three of the Twentieth amendment since a legal Presidential term can only commence with a legal President. If there has been a "failure to qualify" by the President elect, that's where we are. I just don't see how a usurpation can be made legit.
You have a really good point. What is wonderful about all of this, regardless of Trumps motivation, is that truth is bubbling forward. While in the long run, we may end up out of the frying pan and into the fire, in the short term, it would be a wonderful thing to see truth prevail.
If Obama was ever lawfully certified as the electoral winner, then the 20th Amendment would prescribe Cheney to “act as President until a President shall have qualified.”
The statute for certifying an electoral winner was not obeyed, since Dick Cheney did not ask for objections to the state electoral votes as required by statute. I believe Dick Cheney refused to ask for objections specifically so there could be a case raised that Obama was never lawfully certified as the electoral winner and we thus never even HAD a lawful “President elect”. If that is true, then we are stuck at Dec 2009.
But no judge will take an eligibility case. It’s evident that somebody threatened Judge Surick, who received his “decision” (that Berg lacked standing) by fax from somebody else; the date/time stamp from the original fax remained on every page when he forwarded the decision to Berg. If Soros’ goons threatened Surick and got away with it, they must have had something really bad to threaten him with. And there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t have done the same to any judge, including SCOTUS justices. Which would explain why a conservative justice who takes the Constitution seriously (Thomas) would still say they were “evading” the eligibility issue.
The only people who have the power to find that Obama was not eligible is the judiciary, and I believe they have been threatened (possibly with the threat that Soros and his communist-Islamist allies would make another run on the bank that would destroy the entire western world). There is no legal avenue for this mess to be resolved, given that our judiciary and law enforcement have been taken hostage. At this point the only things that will make any difference, IMHO, are
1) state eligibility bills which grant standing to registered voters to challenge eligibility in court and specifically allow discovery of vital birth and citizenship records, including embedded transaction logs which would reveal whether the records are genuine; and
2) public outcry for a CRIMINAL investigation of the cover-up of Obama’s ineligibility - either as a result of what is discovered because of 1, above, or as a result of some other way for public awareness and outcry to be generated. And that’s where Trump could come in.
I think Trump loves his money, loves capitalism, and is sick of the whole system being trashed. I don’t know if his past campaign contributions were him hedging his bets by supporting people from both political parties (as lobbyists do) or if he was one of the “useful idiots” that the KGB talks about - who swallow the rose-colored lies of communism and who are the hardest fighters against communism when they finally see it for what it really is.
I don’t know Trump’s motives. It’s always good to be aware of all possible motives. I do get the feeling from the way he immediately spoke out against the media, for the way they demonize anybody who has any questions, that he is disgusted by what has been going on with this issue as well as a bunch of other things. So I really wonder if he is one of the “useful idiots” who has just seen the light - which is the reason the communists always line up and execute the “useful idiots” once the revolution is successful, to prevent them from becoming disillusioned and fighting the hardest of anybody. I’m wondering if Trump has already reached that point and is thus their worst nightmare right now.
I guess time will tell.