by Bob Unruh
A state board in Kansas that had planned a hearing Monday to examine
evidence of Barack Obama’s eligibility for the Oval Office was left in
limbo today when the plaintiff, citing “animosity and intimidation,”
abruptly withdrew his complaint.
According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, Joe Montgomery of Manhattan, Kan., had filed a complaint with the Kansas Objections Board asking that Obama’s name be removed.
He had cited the fact that Obama has confirmed his father was a
Kenyan national, meaning Obama would not qualify for the Oval Office
under the Constitution’s requirement that a president be a “natural born
citizen.” Court cases and experts have defined natural-born citizen as
the offspring of two citizen parents.
The state board, including three elected state officials, determined
earlier this week there was not enough information available to make a
decision, and they asked for evidence.
A team of activists and researchers who have spent years
investigating the eligibility issue immediately dispatched a letter that
included evidence Obama is ineligible.
But before the next hearing, scheduled for Monday, could be held, Montgomery fled, the Capital-Journal reported.
“There has been a great deal of animosity and intimidation directed
not only at me, but at people around me,” the newspaper reported
Montgomery said in a note to state officials. “I don’t wish to burden
anyone with more of this negative reaction.”
State officials the next steps are unclear, but the board may not
have the option to review the facts without the formal complaint. There
was no immediate indication that anyone else was stepping up to continue
the case.
The information set to be delivered for the committee to review at
its meeting included a letter to members of the Democratic National
Committee warning that certifying Obama as an eligible candidate could be “perjurious.”
The letter, directed to Kansas Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, was from activist Tom Ballantyne, author of
“Oh Really, O’Reilly!”;
former Army. Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, a physician who was drummed out
of the military for questioning Obama’s eligibility; retired Col.
Lawrence Sellin; retired Navy Cmdr. Charles F. Kerchner Jr; and activist
Gary Wilmott.
It was prompted by a report in newspapers that the Kansas board was
considering a complaint brought by Montgomery that Obama should not be
on the ballot because he is ineligible.
The Topeka Capital-Journal
said the three members of the board, Republicans Secretary of State
Kris Kobach, Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Colyer, were asking for
information.
During the hearing, Kobach said: “I don’t think it’s a frivolous
objection. I do think the factual record could be supplemented.”
The paper reported the officials were asking officials in Hawaii,
Arizona and Mississippi, where the issue previously arose, for
information.
In his message to Colyer,
Ballantyne said
the letter being forwarded “contains legal facts and analysis from
noted national attorney Larry Klayman. The information … will be
critical to your making an informed judgment regarding the historic
question before your three-person ballot-challenge panel.”
As WND reported, the
recent letter from Larry Klayman to Robert Bauer, general counsel to the DNC, pointed out evidence of Obama’s ineligibility that could make letters from the DNC to states verifying his eligibility an act of election fraud.
Klayman, a former U.S. Justice Department attorney who founded the government watchdog Judicial Watch and later
Freedom Watch, wrote:
At the same time that you are receiving
this legal analysis, each DNC Executive Committee member – as well as
each state Democratic Party chair, secretary of state, and state
attorney general – is receiving a certified letter advising them of the
legal jeopardy in which they place themselves should they proceed – in
light of the facts herein presented – to certify to state or national
election officials that Barack Hussein Obama is the constitutionally and
legally qualified Democratic candidate for president of the United
States.
Arizona’s inquiry
The evidence Klayman cites in the letter includes Arizona Secretary
of State Ken Bennett’s highly publicized request of the state of Hawaii
to verify that the likely Democratic nominee is a “natural-born
citizen.”
WND reported Bennett eventually closed his inquiry without obtaining any pertinent documentation.
Bennett formally inquired of Hawaii for verification of Obama’s birth
records, and when he received a statement from state officials
announced his inquiry was closed.
“As to whether the president was born in Hawaii, personally I believe
he was,” he said. “I actually think he was fibbing about being born in
Kenya when he was trying to get into college.”
But Bennett said all clearly was not above board.
“I think he has spent $1.5 to $2 million through attorneys to have
all the college records and all that stuff sealed,” Bennett said. “So if
you’re spending money to seal something, that’s probably where the
hanky panky was going on.”
Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio continues to investigate
Obama’s eligibility after determining that the image of a birth document
posted online by the White House is fraudulent.
Path to conclusion
Klayman’s path to the conclusion that no one really can know Obama’s eligibility wasn’t complicated.
He contended Hawaii State Registrar Alvin Onaka “failed” to provide verification to Bennett of Obama’s birth information.
He did, however, verify that “the information in the copy of the
Certificate of Live Birth for Mr. Obama that you attached with your
request matches the original record in our files.”
“Mr. Onaka
undeniably failed to verify that the image posted at whitehouse.gov ‘is a true and accurate representation of the original record,’” he wrote.
But Klayman explained state law requires Onaka to furnish “in lieu of
the issuance of a certified copy, a verification of the existence of a
certificate and any other information that the applicant provides to be
verified.”
Klayman said the law leaves Onaka with no option and “the only legal reason for Onaka to not verify those facts is if he can’t
legally do so. Since he verified that those claims
are on the record in the DOH files, the record itself must not have ‘probative value.’
“The only legal reason for not verifying that the posted long-form
‘is a true and accurate representation of the original record in [the
DOH] files’ is if it is not. There is no other plausible explanation,”
Klayman said.
WND called Bauer’s firm, Perkins Coie, for comment, but there was no response.
Altered
Klayman said the only Hawaii statute allowing birth certificates “to
be non-legally binding” is the law regarding “late” or “altered”
certificates, which states: “The probative value of a ‘late’ or
‘altered’ certificate shall be determined by the judicial or
administrative body or official before whom the certificate is offered
as evidence.”
“Unless and until Mr. Obama’s original birth record, on file with the
Department of Health in Hawaii, is presented as evidence to a judicial
or administrative body or official, it cannot legally be considered to
have probative value. In other words … it cannot stand alone without
further corroboration, as required by an ‘administrative body or
official,” Klayman wrote.
Klayman’s conclusion is that “no one can state
with any legal certainty
that candidate Obama is even old enough to be president, much less that
he meets the exclusively high bar of ‘natural-born citizen’ status,
required by Article II, Section I, Clause 5.”
He noted at this point, “No one can legally swear that Mr. Obama is
constitutionally eligible to be president; and because the DNC bylaws
require
the Democratic presidential candidate to be constitutionally eligible,
there is also, therefore, no party official who can legally swear that
Mr. Obama is the ‘legally qualified candidate’ of the Democratic Party,
under its own bylaws.”
Perjury
For a party official to declare Obama eligible “would be to perjure him or herself,” he wrote.
Klayman told Bauer that in 2008 the Hawaii Democratic Party “removed
the standard language heretofore employed certifying the ‘constitutional
eligibility’ of candidates Obama and Biden.”
“In other words, the state party
most keenly aware of Mr. Obama’s existing records
would not (and
did not) certify their constitutional eligibility,” he said. However, at the same time, “then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
did
certify their constitutional eligibility [to present] to election
officials in Hawaii, while removing that same standard language [when it
was] presented in at least some (if not
all) of the remaining states.”
Klayman, whose high-profile legal career has included lawsuits
against OPEC, Cuban interests, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez, told
WND the letter puts Democrats on notice that certifying Obama’s
eligibility without having the actual knowledge opens them up to
liability for making false statements.
2008 documents
WND reported early in Obama’s term on the Democrats’ certification of Obama’s eligibility for the 2008 election.
A commentator at
Canada Free Press
first exposed the Democratic National Committee used two separate forms
to affirm Obama’s constitutional eligibility to be president and then
said Democrats failed to certify their candidate’s eligibility in 49 of
the 50 states.
“In most states,” Williams wrote, “it appears that the DNC never
certified constitutional eligibility for Barack Hussein Obama, despite
their many claims of proper vetting and certification, all of which we
now know to be false.”
Williams posted copies
of two documents apparently prepared by Democrats to certify Obama as
their nominee for president, one that contains language affirming his
constitutional eligibility and filed in Hawaii (where state law requires
the specific language) and another omitting the language and filed in
the remaining 49 states.
The first includes a verification that Obama and Joe Biden, then
candidate for vice president, “are legally qualified to serve under the
provisions of the United States Constitution.”
The second form obtained by Williams appears identical, but in this one,
the verification of eligibility under the requirements of the U.S.
Constitution is gone.
