Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's citizenship, and other challenges to his eligibility to become President of the United States, circulated during and after the US presidential election of 2008. A number of fringe activists, pundits and political opponents of the Illinois Senator alleged that he was not a natural born citizen and so was not eligible to become President of the United States under Article Two of the U.S. Constitution. Claims about Obama's birthplace were addressed by the Director of the Hawaiian Department of Health who verified that the State had Obama's "original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures". The Obama campaign released a 2007 certified abstract copy of his Certification of Live Birth (sometimes called a "short form") that states Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1961. A common complaint of those questioning Obama's eligibility is that he has not released a photocopy of his original, official certificate of live birth—only the shorter official summary certification.

Some of the people challenging Obama's eligibility have variously promoted conspiracy theories that his short-form certificate was forged, or that he was born in Kenya. Other theories propose that Obama became a citizen of Indonesia, or that because he had dual citizenship at birth (British and US) he is not a natural-born citizen of the US. According to opinion polling carried out in November 2008, around 10% of the US population believed such claims. Individuals promoting eligibility claims have been dubbed "Birthers", drawing a parallel with 9/11 conspiracy theorists, who have been nicknamed "Truthers".

A number of lawsuits have been filed seeking to disqualify Obama from standing or being confirmed as President, or to obtain better proof that he is qualified. Three have been filed with the Supreme Court of the United States, although the Court has declined to hear them. None of the cases has prevailed in lower courts. Although Obama was duly confirmed as president-elect by Congress on January 8, 2009, and sworn in as President on January 20, litigation has continued after that date.

Early life of Barack Obama

Main article: Early life and career of Barack Obama

Barack Obama was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Ann Dunham, an American from Wichita, Kansas, of mainly English descent. Obama's father was Barack Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya. After they were divorced in 1964, Dunham married Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro who was attending college in Hawaii. The family moved to Jakarta in Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended a local public and a local Catholic school until he was ten years old. He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, and has resided permanently in the United States since 1971.

Campaigners

A John McCain supporter questioning the legitimacy of Obama's birth certificate

The campaign against Obama's eligibility has been supported by a number of fringe websites, talk radio hosts, chain e-mails, fund-raising pitches and online petitions. Notable advocates of the view that Obama may not be eligible for the Presidency include Philip J. Berg, a Pennsylvania attorney and 9/11 conspiracy theorist; Berg describes himself as a "moderate to liberal" Democrat who backed Hillary Clinton for president. Another notable advocate is Alan Keyes, who was defeated by Obama in the 2004 Illinois US Senate election, and who describes himself as a "high-level Reagan era diplomat, a media personality and a conservative political activist." Other notable advocates include Andy Martin, a perennial candidate who was "widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign" that Obama is a secret Muslim, and Bob Schulz, a tax protester and activist who placed full-page advertisements in the Chicago Tribune in December 2008 arguing that Obama had been born in Kenya or had subsequently renounced U.S. citizenship. The Constitution Party, a conservative third party, is also campaigning for release of Obama's original long-form certificate.

The website AmericaMustKnow.com encouraged visitors to lobby members of the Electoral College to become "faithless electors" and vote against Obama's confirmation as President. Electors around the country received numerous letters and e-mails contending that Obama's birth certificate is a forgery and that he was born in Kenya, and requesting that Obama should be denied the presidency. Some of the online campaigners have coordinated their efforts with weekly conference calls, in which five to ten of them discuss the latest news and how to advance the story.

The campaign has also been supported by the WorldNetDaily (WND) website, which sponsored a letter-writing campaign to the Supreme Court. WND's publisher Joseph Farah has written a number of editorials arguing that Obama's eligibility needs to be confirmed. The talk radio hosts Michael Savage, Brian Sussman, Lars Larson, Bob Grant, Jim Quinn, Rose Tennent and Mark Davis have all promoted the eligibility claims on their radio shows. Savage has asserted: "We're getting ready for the Communist takeover of America with a noncitizen at the helm."

The anti-Obama campaigners have not, however, been unanimous in their approach. For example, WorldNetDaily has been critical of Philip Berg's forgery claims, saying that a "WND investigation into Obama's [short form] birth certificate utilizing forgery experts ... found the document to be authentic." At the same time, WND has been urging Obama to release his original long-form certificate, and WND contends that "Hawaii at the time of Obama's birth allowed births that took place in foreign countries to be registered in Hawaii"; and a subsequent WND article seemed to backtrack on the earlier one, saying now of the experts it had quoted earlier that "None of them could report conclusively that the electronic image was authentic or that it was a forgery." This apparent reversal prompted MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to declare WND's Joseph Farah to be his "Worst Person in the World" for January 5, 2009.

Citizenship facts, rumors and claims

Barack Obama's short-form Certification of Live Birth

During the Democratic Party's presidential primaries and the subsequent presidential election, allegations were circulated that Obama is not a natural-born citizen qualified to stand for the Presidency; that his middle name was originally Muhammad rather than Hussein; and that his father had not really been Barack Obama, Sr.

Claims that Obama was not born in Hawaii

The Obama campaign published a rebuttal of a number of rumors in June 2008 by launching a website to counter what it described as a smear campaign against the candidate. The site included a scanned image of Obama's Certification of Live Birth issued by the State of Hawaii's Department of Health in June 2007. The website declared:

Smears claiming Barack Obama doesn’t have a birth certificate aren’t actually about that piece of paper — they’re about manipulating people into thinking Barack is not an American citizen. The truth is, Barack Obama was born in the state of Hawaii in 1961, a native citizen of the United States of America.

The release of the certificate prompted a fresh round of conspiracy theorizing. Some critics asserted that the certificate had been digitally forged with Adobe Photoshop and lacked a stamped seal of the state and demanded that Obama release his original 1961 birth certificate. Jerome Corsi, author of the book The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, told Fox News that "the campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their website ... it's been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It's a fake document that's on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce."

This view was rejected by the state authorities, the media and independent factchecking organizations. FactCheck.org was invited to view the Obama campaign's hard copy of the candidate's Certification of Live Birth and concluded:

[I]t meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.

The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health, Chiyome Fukino, issued a statement confirming that the state held Obama's "original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures". Noting "there have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama's official birth certificate", Fukino explained that the department was prohibited by state law from releasing it to "persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record." She stated: "No state official, including Gov. Linda Lingle, has ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawai'i."

The image posted online at Obama's website is known as a short-form birth certificate, and is different from a long-form. Obama's short form was laser-printed and certified by the State of Hawaii on June 6, 2007, as prima facie "evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding". A spokeswoman for Hawaii’s department of health asserted that state law does not allow her department to confirm vital records such as the unreleased 1961 long-form. The spokeswoman says they would release the long form with permission from Barack Obama. A hospital spokesperson at Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children says that their standard procedure is to not confirm or deny that Obama was born there, citing federal privacy laws.

A birth notice for Barack Obama was published in two local newspapers in August 1961. Such notices were sent to newspapers routinely by the Hawaii Department of Health. People such as Alan Keyes who are questioning Obama’s birth location point to a Hawaii statute that allows births to be registered for children born out of state; however, that law was passed only in 1982 (21 years after Obama's birth registration) and its text does not indicate that out-of-state births will be listed with a Hawaiian place of birth. Keyes also alleges that block 7c of the long-form Certificate of Live Birth contains the word "country" in its label proving foreign-born children could be registered, but block 7c is the usual residence of the mother, not the location of birth (the location of birth is in block 6a, which has no "country" label). In any case, Obama's published short-form certificate specifically says that he was born in Honolulu.

Claims that Obama is not "natural-born citizen" even if born in Hawaii

Some plaintiffs, such as Leo Donofrio, have asserted that Barack Obama is ineligible for the Presidency even if born in Hawaii. They argue that he held dual citizenship when born, or that he did not qualify for US citizenship in the first place due to his father not being a US citizen.

In August 2008, the Rocky Mountain News ran an online article asserting that Obama is both a US and a Kenyan citizen. This turned out to be incorrect. Although the paper published an apology for the mistake, it provided more fuel for online rumors about Obama's eligibility for the presidency. FactCheck noted that Obama had indeed been a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies by virtue of his descent from a Kenyan father at a time when Kenya was a British colony. However, Kenya's constitution prohibits dual citizenship in adulthood. Obama had therefore automatically lost his Kenyan citizenship at age 21, in 1982, by failing to formally renounce any non-Kenyan citizenship and swear an oath of allegiance to Kenya.

Philip Berg, who has brought lawsuits seeking to prevent the Electoral College being seated in the 2008 presidential election, also claims that Obama was adopted by Lolo Soetoro and thus Obama lost his U.S. citizenship. Obama was known as "Barry Soetoro" for a few years, after his stepfather Lolo Soetoro, when he lived in Indonesia as a child between 1967-1971.

Commentary and criticism

An editorial by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin dismissed some of the claims about Obama's eligibility as proposing "a vast conspiracy involving Obama's parents, state officials, the news media, the Secret Service, think tanks and a host of yet-to-be-uncovered others who have connived since Obama's birth to build a false record so that he could eventually seek the presidency 47 years later." The St. Petersburg Times' fact-checking website, PolitiFact.com, comments:

It is possible that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world's biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything's possible. But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what's reasonable has to take over. There is not one shred of evidence to disprove PolitiFact's conclusion that the candidate's name is Barack Hussein Obama, or to support allegations that the birth certificate he released isn't authentic. And that's true no matter how many people cling to some hint of doubt and use the Internet to fuel their innate sense of distrust.

Some commenters have raised questions about Obama's birth certificate, even while condemning the tactics of those people campaigning to have him declared ineligible. For example, social critic and feminist Camille Paglia argued in the magazine Salon:

I had thought for many months that the flap over Obama's birth certificate was a tempest in a teapot. But simple questions about the certificate were never resolved to my satisfaction. Thanks to their own blathering, fanatical overkill, of course, the right-wing challenges to the birth certificate never gained traction. But Obama could have ended the entire matter months ago by publicly requesting Hawaii to issue a fresh, long-form, stamped certificate and inviting a few high-profile reporters in to examine the document and photograph it. (The campaign did make the "short-form" certificate available to Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.)

Paglia's argument that Obama should release a copy of the full, original 1961 certificate is perhaps the most common argument of people questioning Obama's eligibility; even if Obama were to oblige, the issue might not go away, in view of the fact that it was the Obama campaign's release of the short-form that "stoked the fever of conspiracy mongers," as Salon's Alex Koppelman put it.

Columnist Michelle Malkin has ridiculed the theories about the short-form birth certificate, writing that the "birth certificate hunters have lurched into rabid Truther territory" and that "they accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being part and parcel of the grand plan to install Emperor Obama and usurp the rule of law." At the same time, Malkin says that there "may be a seed of a legitimate constitutional issue to explore here" regarding the broader issue of how the citizenship requirement is enforced for presidential candidates.

According to Salon, "almost all of the people who've been most prominent in pushing this story have a history of conspiracist thought." In response to the notion that Obama's grandparents might have planted a birth announcement in newspapers just so their grandson could someday be president, FactCheck suggested that "those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat." Brooks Jackson, the director of FactCheck, comments that "it all reflects a surge of paranoid distress among people who don't like Barack Obama" and who want the election results to go away. Chip Berlet, a journalist who has studied the spread of conspiracy theories, notes "For some people, when their side loses an election, the only explanation that makes sense to them – that they can cope with – is that sinister, bad, evil people arranged some kind of fraud." American political writer Dana Milbank, writing for the Washington Post, describes the Obama citizenship theories of Bob Schulz as "hysteria." Colorado elector Camilla Auger, responding to lobbying of members of the state's electoral college, commented: "I was concerned that there are that many nutty people in the country making depressing, absurd allegations. There are so many problems in the country right now, we need to work together."

As a result of the widespread publicity given to the citizenship controversy, 60% of respondents in an Ohio State University survey carried out in November 2008 had heard of the issue. However, only 10% believed the claims that Obama was not a citizen.

Litigation

A number of individuals have filed lawsuits seeking to have Obama disqualified from standing or being confirmed for the Presidency of the United States. By mid-December 2008, at least 17 lawsuits had been filed challenging Obama's eligibility in states including North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, Connecticut, New Jersey, Texas and Washington state.

A major obstacle to such citizen suits has been lack of standing, as none of the plaintiffs were presidential candidates or presidential electors, with the exception of Alan Keyes. In addition, according to UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh, a legal challenge to Obama’s citizenship would have to establish not only that he was born outside the United States but also that Congress cannot retroactively make someone a citizen at birth. Volokh subsequently revisited and modified his position, saying that "the same rule that was in place in the early 1960s" is currently in place. The importance of the doctrine of standing was explained by Judge R. Barclay Surrick of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in dismissing one suit. He noted that one of the principal aims of the doctrine is to prevent courts from deciding questions "where the harm is too vague." This was especially true for a presidential election, where a disgruntled voter who suffered no individual harm "would have us derail the democratic process by invalidating a candidate for whom millions of people voted and who underwent excessive vetting during what was one of the most hotly contested presidential primary in living memory."

Despite setbacks, Gary Kreep, who heads the non-profit organization United States Justice Foundation and is involved in the lawsuits over Obama's eligibility, has declared that his group will "file suit to challenge each and every one of Obama's actions as president."

Berg v. Obama

On August 21, 2008, Pennsylvania attorney Philip J. Berg filed a complaint alleging that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and was therefore a citizen of Kenya or possibly Indonesia, where he lived as a child. He alleged that the "Certification of Live Birth" on Obama's website is a forgery.

U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick dismissed the complaint in October 2008, finding that Berg lacked standing to bring the case and that his attempts to gain standing to pursue his claim were "frivolous and not worthy of discussion." Bypassing the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Berg filed a petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment in the United States Supreme Court. On December 10, 2008 the Supreme Court denied Berg's request for an injunction against the seating of the Electoral College, scheduled for December 15. On December 15, 2008, the petitioner refiled the application for injunction. Two days later, Berg's appeal was denied without comment by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Berg's previously denied request for an injunction was refiled with Justice Antonin Scalia on December 18, 2008. On January 12, the Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari. The application for stay addressed to Justice Scalia and referred to the Court was also summarily denied on January 21, 2009.

Martin v. Lingle

On October 17, 2008, another lawsuit was filed in a state circuit court of Hawaii by Andy Martin, who was earlier declared by the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit as a "notoriously vexatious and vindictive litigator who has long abused the American legal system." Martin's lawsuit sought to order the state to release a copy of Sen. Obama's long-form birth certificate. The short-form birth certificate that the Obama campaign posted online states his place of birth as Honolulu, Hawaii.

The court denied Martin's petition, saying that Martin lacked "a direct and tangible interest in the record." The court cited Martin's lack of legal standing to obtain another person's birth document.

Donofrio v. Wells

Leo Donofrio, a retired lawyer from New Jersey, filed suit to challenge the eligibility of Obama, Republican presidential candidate John McCain and the Socialist Workers Party candidate Roger Calero. Donofrio asserted that all three candidates were ineligible: Obama due to having dual US and British nationality at birth (the latter via Obama's father), McCain due to being born in the Panama Canal Zone, and Calero due to allegedly still having Nicaraguan citizenship.

Donofrio was not among those who claimed Obama might have been born outside Hawaii. Also, Donofrio did not challenge the fact that Obama is a U.S. citizen and instead challenged only whether Obama is a natural-born citizen.

When the case reached the United States Supreme Court on December 8, 2008, the Court declined without comment to hear the case.

Justice Thomas's actions attracted interest from commentators who speculated that his referral of the case was some form of payback for a supposed snub by Obama. However, the Los Angeles Times commented that "[w]hen persistent litigants file motions with more than one justice, the court’s normal practice is to refer the matter to the full court." The leading treatise on U.S. Supreme Court practice, published long before this case, confirms that "it is ... the present practice for the Justice to whom a resubmission has been transmitted to refer the application to the entire Court for action." The case generated interest mostly on ideological political blogs and websites.

Wrotnowski v. Bysiewicz

On October 31, 2008, Greenwich resident and health food store owner Cort Wrotnowski filed a suit in the Connecticut Supreme Court challenging the authenticity of presidential candidate Obama's Hawaii birth certificate. The suit was dismissed after initial hearings.

Wrotnowski appealed to the US Supreme Court on November 25, contending that the British citizenship of Obama's father made the president-elect ineligible to assume office. Leo Donofrio, whose earlier case against Obama's eligibility had been turned down, assisted Wrotnowski's Supereme Court appeal. The request for stay or injunction was denied without comment on December 15, 2008. Thomas Goldstein, who has argued numerous cases before the court and covers Supreme Court cases, commented that "The law has always been understood to be, if you are born here, you're a natural born citizen. And that is particularly true in this case, when you have a U.S. citizen parent like Barack Obama's mother".

Keyes v. Bowen

Alan Keyes and Markham Robinson, chairman of the American Independent Party and a California candidate for president elector, filed a lawsuit on November 14, 2008 requesting that Obama provide documentation that he is a natural born citizen of the United States. Keyes also said in an interview that he would not be in favor of amending this requirement of the Constitution.

According to Keyes, elections officials currently require only a presidential candidate to provide a signed statement attesting that they meet qualifications. Keyes says, "This practice represents a much lower standard than that demanded of when requesting a California driver's license."

Keyes' petition also says that "the only way to verify the exact location of birth is to review a certified copy or the original vault Certificate of Live Birth". In another lawsuit, plaintiffs, including Keyes, subpoenaed a copy of Obama's birth certificate. The Hawaii health department denied that request citing confidentiality laws, and a state court dismissed the suit. Keyes asserts that statements by Obama's Kenyan grandmother "raise doubts as to whether Barack Obama is in fact a natural born U.S. citizen, eligible to be president, " though the full transcript of the interview indicates that Obama's grandmother did not raise doubts of his place of birth.

Hollister v. Soetoro

On March 5, 2009, a lawsuit filed by Philip Berg on behalf of Gregory S. Hollister, a retired Air Force colonel, was dismissed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The presiding judge said the case was a waste of the court's time, calling Berg and another lawyer "agents provocateurs" and their local counsel "a foot soldier in their crusade." He ordered that Hollister's attorney should prove why he should not pay the legal fees for Obama's attorney as a penalty for filing a complaint "for an improper purpose such as to harass."

Legislative initiatives and responses

The campaign questioning Obama's eligibility has received support from a number of Republican members of state legislatures.

Oklahoma Republican state Representative Mike Ritze proposed a bill in December 2008 requiring any candidate for public office in Oklahoma to show proof of citizenship. Ritze declared that he "does not believe Obama submitted an authentic copy of his birth certificate." He also unsuccessfully approached Republican Senators Tom Coburn and James Inhofe to persuade them to mount a challenge to Obama's confirmation by Congress.

In Ohio, outgoing Republican state Representative Diana M. Fessler proposed a joint resolution calling on members of the Electoral College "to exercise due diligence to ensure that the persons for whom they cast their ballots for president and vice president of the United States are citizens of the United States ... through such means as examining the birth certificates of those persons." The Columbus Dispatch reported that "Fessler ... said she introduced the resolution at the behest of some constituents who remain convinced that Obama does not qualify to be president."

In Tennessee, four Republican state Representatives — Stacey Campfield, Glen Casada, Frank S. Niceley and Eric H. Swafford — announced in February 2009 that they would be joining a legal action to force Obama to release his birth certificate and prove his citizenship. Casada, the Tennessee House Republican caucus chairman, said that he believes Obama has further proof of eligibility, and would like him to make it available: "It's a simple act on his part to just do, and we're done — move on." The lawsuit is to be filed by a Russian immigrant dentist in California by the name of Dr. Orly Taitz, representing the "Defend Our Freedoms Foundation." The announcement prompted ridicule from Democratic lawmakers, with one asking on the House floor for Swafford to produce his own birth certificate.

In Missouri, fifteen Republican members of the part-time 163-member Missouri House of Representatives sponsored an amendment to the Missouri Constitution in March 2009 that would require "candidates who are required by the Constitution of the United States to be natural born citizens" to provide a birth certificate to the Missouri Secretary of State to confirm their eligibility. A certificate of live birth would not be accepted. Failure to comply would result in the candidate being deemed ineligible to stand. The only political office to be affected would be the presidency, which is the only position for which there is a specific constitutional citizenship requirement. The proposed amendment is part of a "voter’s bill of rights," which would serve "as a defense against corruption, fraud, and tyranny." Political commentators interpreted the proposal as being "aimed at advancing the claims of the fringe movement that doubts President Barack Obama's eligibility to serve as president".

Some activists also lobbied members of Congress to reject the Electoral College vote and block Obama's election as president in its sitting on January 8, 2009 to certify and tally the results of the election. Two Republican members of the House of Representatives, John Linder and Ron Paul, were heavily lobbied by activists who believed that the two lawmakers would be more willing than than other members of Congress to raise objections to Obama's confirmation. The lobbying was unsuccessful and Congress unanimously declared Obama to be the winner of the election.

See also

• Birthright citizenship in the United States of America