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, have circulated before and after his victory in the US presidential election of 2008. A number of fringe activists and political opponents nicknamed "birthers" allege that he is not a natural born citizen, and thus is not eligible to be President of the United States under Article Two of the U.S. Constitution. The theory received attention in mid 2008 following Obama's victory in the Democratic primaries, in late 2008 - early 2009 with regard to the electoral college vote and Obama's inauguration, and again in mid-2009 following Stefan F. Cook's lawsuit. The "birthers" moniker draws a parallel with 9/11 conspiracy theorists, who have been nicknamed "truthers".

The Obama campaign released a 2007 certified abstract copy of his Certification of Live Birth (sometimes called a "short form") that states Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. A common complaint of those questioning Obama's eligibility is that he has not released a photocopy of his original, official birth certificate – only a short official certification of live birth. Asked about this, Department of Health Spokeswoman Janice Okubo stated that Hawaii "does not have a short-form or long-form certificate." The director of her Department has stated that the state holds Obama's "original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."

Some of the people challenging Obama's eligibility have alleged that his short-form certificate was forged, or that he was born in Kenya. Others allege 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.

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, and the Court has refused 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 into his presidency.

Although the movement has been widely criticized by mainstream conservatives, some Republican congressmen are either skeptical about Obama's citizenship or unwilling to acknowledge it. A few members of Congress have proposed legislation to prevent future occurrences of such issues.

Early life of Obama

Main articles: Early life and career of Barack Obama and Ann Dunham

People who have doubts about President Obama's eligibility reject (or question) at least some of the following details about the early life of Obama:

He was born on August 4, 1961 at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Ann Dunham, herself a natural born citizen of the United States from Wichita, Kansas. Obama's father was Barack Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya. Obama's parents were divorced in 1964. His mother subsequently married Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro, who was attending the University of Hawaii. The family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended a local public and a local private 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.

Citizenship facts, rumors and claims

Barack Obama's Certification of Live Birth

During the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential primaries and the subsequent presidential election, numerous chain e-mails circulated rumors about Obama's background.

Jim Geraghty of the conservative website National Review Online sparked further speculation when he asked that Obama release his birth certificate to disprove rumors that he was not a natural-born citizen qualified to stand for the Presidency. Geraghty wrote that releasing his birth certificate could also debunk several other rumors: that his middle name was originally Muhammad rather than Hussein; that his mother had originally named him "Barry" rather than "Barack"; and that his father had not really been Barack Obama, Sr. The Obama campaign responded in June 2008 by releasing his birth certificate and launching a website called "Fight the Smears" to counter what it described as a smear campaign against the candidate. Geraghty subsequently conceded: "there is no reason to think his [long-form] birth certificate would have any different data."

Claims that Obama was not born in Hawaii

The Obama campaign's "Fight the Smears" website published 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." According to CNN's researchers, the original birth certificate no longer exists, as Hawaii discarded all paper birth records in 2001, and the certification of live birth is the official copy. Contradicting CNN, Janice Okubo, public information officer for the Hawaii DOH, said "We don't destroy vital records."

Opponents asserted that Hawaiian officials had not explicitly addressed the fact that Obama was born in Hawaii, and pointed to a provision of Hawaiian law that permits the issuance of certifications of live birth to those born outside the state or even outside the country. However, the suggestion that this could have applied to Obama was rejected by Janice Okubo, director of communications for the Hawaii Department of Health: "If you were born in Bali, for example, you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali. You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate." On July 27, 2009, Fukino issued a statement explicitly stating she has "seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawai'i State Department of Health verifying Barrack [sic] Hussein Obama was born in Hawai'i and is a natural-born American citizen."

The image posted online at Obama's website is known as a short-form birth certificate, and is different from a long-form. Although the short-form "Certification of Live Birth" presented by Obama contains less information than the longer "Certificate of Live Birth," the Hawaii State Department of Health no longer issues the long-form Certificate and issues only the shorter Certification upon request. 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".

In 2008 it had been reported by Forbes magazine that Janice Okubo had said, "we are not allowed to confirm vital information and vital records."However, either Okubo or Forbes may have been in error, because later (above-referenced) statements by both Okubo and Chiyome Fukino did confirm that Obama was an American citizen born in Hawai'i.

When Internet columnist and author Andy Martin requested that the State of Hawaii send him his own personal copy of Obama’s Certification of Live Birth, Okuba elaborated on state policy for the release of vital records: "If someone from Obama's campaign gave us permission in person and presented some kind of verification that he or she was Obama's designee, we could release the vital record." A hospital spokesperson at Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children has said that their standard procedure is to neither confirm nor deny that Obama was born there, citing federal privacy laws.

A birth notice for Barack Obama was published in both the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on August 13 and August 14, 1961 respectively, listing the home address of Obama's parents as 6085 Kalanianaole Highway in Honolulu. On August 3, 2009, in response to the growing controversy, the Advertiser posted on its Web site a screenshot of the announcement taken from its microfilmed archives. Such notices were sent to newspapers routinely by the Hawaii Department of Health.

In a scathing editorial published on July 29, 2009, the Star-Bulletin pointed out that both newspapers' vital-statistics columns are available on microfilm in the main state library. "Were the state Department of Health and Obama's parents really in cahoots to give false information to the newspapers, perhaps intending to clear the way for the baby to someday be elected president of the United States?" the newspaper asked sarcastically.

Andrew Malcolm, of the Los Angeles Times, has argued that Obama would be eligible for the presidency, because his mother was an American citizen, irrespective of where he was born, saying that Obama's mother "could have been on Mars when wee Barry emerged and he'd still be American." According to UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh, in the hypothetical scenario that Obama was born outside the U.S., he would not be a natural-born citizen since the then-applicable law would have required Obama's mother to have been in the U.S. at least "five years after the age of 14", but Ann Dunham was three months shy of her 19th birthday when Obama was born.

Hawaiian born, but not "natural-born citizen"

Dual citizenship claims

In spite of the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which states that anyone born in any state is a citizen, some campaigners, such as Leo Donofrio, have asserted that Barack Obama is ineligible for the Presidency even if born in Hawaii. According to those believing in the theory, since Obama's father was Kenyan with British citizenship and not a US citizen, they argue that Obama held dual citizenship when born, or that he did not qualify for US citizenship in the first place.

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 (CUKC) by virtue of his descent from a Kenyan father at a time when Kenya was a British colony, and lost CUKC citizenship and became a Kenyan citizen when that country gained independence in 1963. 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.

Loss of citizenship claims

Philip Berg, who brought lawsuits seeking to prevent the Electoral College from being seated in the 2008 presidential election, also claims that Obama was supposedly adopted by his mother's second husband, Lolo Soetoro, and therefore Obama lost his U.S. citizenship. Berg's claim relies on the fact that Obama used the name "Barry Soetoro" when he lived in Indonesia, and ignores the Supreme Court case of Perkins v. Elg, which states that a minor cannot give up his American citizenship through actions of the parents.

Various other issues

Claims that the certification of live birth is meaningless

Some birthers claim that the certification of live birth produced by Obama does not prove that he is a natural born citizen because they claim that foreign-born children could acquire Hawaiian certification of live birth (COLB), so that Obama's possession of such a certificate does not prove that he was born in Hawaii; or that the information in such a certificate only has to be based on the testimony of one parent. These claims were refuted with the following explanation: The law allowing foreign-born children to obtain Hawaiian COLBs didn’t exist until 20 years after Obama was born, while Obama’s published COLB says his birth information was recorded four days after his birth in 1961, and explicitly states that he was born in Honolulu.

Claims about travel to Pakistan using a non-US passports

Another claim used by some birthers that Obama could not be a natural born citizen is that he traveled to Pakistan at a time when there was a ban on United States passport holders entering that country, which means he must have traveled using a non-US passport. The OC Weekly comments that these assertions are not true:

The Pakistan "travel ban" is a complete fabrication based on zero evidence and completely contradicted by State Department records and a 1981 New York Times article.

Obama's paternal step-grandmother's version of events

Another claim used by some birthers that Obama could not be a natural born citizen is that his father's step-mother, Sarah Obama, told a reporter that she was present when Obama was born in Kenya.

The McClatchy newspapers gave an explanation of how the false story about Obama's step-grandmother began. The tape relied on by Berg and others is cut off in the middle of the conversation, before the passage in which she clarifies her meaning: "'Obama was not born in Mombasa. He was born in America,' the translator says after talking to the woman. ... Another response later says, 'Obama in Hawaii. Hawaii. She says he was born in Hawaii.'"

Sarah Obama shed more light on the controversy in a 2007 interview with the Tribune Company. In the interview, Obama's paternal step grandmother stated that six months after Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham got married, she received a letter (at her home in Kenya) announcing the birth of Barack Obama Jr., who was born Aug. 4, 1961.

Alleged Kenyan birth certificate

On August 2, 2009, Orly Taitz released and attached to court documents what she alleged to be an authentic Kenyan birth certificate. The document was almost immediately challenged as a forgery. It purports to have been issued by the "Republic of Kenya", when in fact, such a state did not yet exist at the time of Obama's birth as indicated on the document (Kenya was a Dominion of the British Crown until 1963). Additionally, Mombasa, the city indicated on the certificate as Obama's birthplace, was not located in Kenya, but in Zanzibar. Subsequently, evidence was unearthed that the alleged Kenyan birth certificate is possibly a modified version of a 1959 Australian birth certificate found on an online genealogy website.

Campaigners and proponents

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

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 Robert L. 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 constitutionalist 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 vote against Obama's confirmation as President and become faithless electors. 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 coordinated their efforts with weekly conference calls, in which they discussed 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. WND has mounted an advertising campaign, using electronic billboards to ask "Where's The Birth Certificate?" The talk radio hosts Michael Savage, Brian Sussman, Lars Larson, Bob Grant, Jim Quinn, Rose Tennent, Barbara Simpson, and Mark Davis have all promoted the eligibility claims on their radio shows. Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs have also broached the issue several times on their 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 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. Farah asserted in July 2009 that "I have never challenged the certification of live birth as a forgery."

According to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, "the birther movement has gained a large following on the radical right... it has been adopted by the most noxious elements out there." Some of those "noxious elements" include a number of avowed white-supremacist and neo-Nazi groups. James von Brunn, an avowed white supremacist charged as the gunman in the June 10, 2009 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting, had previously posted messages to the Internet accusing Obama and the media of hiding documents about his life. Ben Smith of The Politico commented: "The penetration of the birther mythology into the violent fringe has to be a worry for the Secret Service, because at its heart, it's about denying Obama's legitimacy to hold the office of president."

Richard Shelby

In February 2009, a local Alabama newspaper reported that at a town hall meeting Senator Richard Shelby was asked if there was any truth to the rumors that Obama was not a natural-born citizen. According to the paper, Shelby responded that "Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate". A Shelby spokesperson denied the story, but the newspaper stood by the story.

Roy Blunt

On July 28, 2009 Mike Stark approached Missouri Congressman Roy Blunt asking him about the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen. Blunt responded:

What I don’t know is why the President can’t produce a birth certificate. I don’t know anybody else that can’t produce one. And I think that’s a legitimate question. No health records, no birth certificate

Blunt's spokesperson later claimed that the quote was taken out of context.

Commentary and criticism

An anti-Obama protester in Austin, Texas on July 4, 2009, with a sign repeating a joke used by some commentators

"The Birthers go beyond simple conspiracy theories - they're cast members of the ongoing American denying-reality show, not unlike the folks who deny the moonlanding or the Holocaust , and very much like the Creationists who insist that the Earth is but 6,000 years old, the Teabaggers who refuse to believe they must pay taxes, the 9/11 Truthers who say the government attacked the Twin Towers, and, as we might call them, the Inhofers who believe global warming is a hoax."

— The Nation, July 24 2009

In an August 23, 2008, article about Berg's lawsuit, WND claimed it had investigated Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate utilizing forgery experts and, "found the document to be authentic," contradicting claims made in other WND articles and in Corsi's book. However, on December 20, after numerous liberal websites, politicians and media personalities touted WND's findings, Joseph Farah claimed in a WND column that the forgery experts had not actually concluded it was authentic and that, "None of them could report conclusively that the electronic image [of the birth certificate on Obama's campaign website] was authentic or that it was a forgery." After MSNBC's Keith Olbermann named Farah the "Worst Person in the World" on his show, Countdown, for his apparent reversal, Farah defended himself, claiming, "the veracity of that image was never the major issue of contention. Rather, the major issue is where is the rest of the birth certificate – the part that explains where the baby was born, who the delivery doctor was, etc...I can tell you WND has done its part to find out the truth."

Critics have dubbed proponents of claims about Obama's eligibility as "birthers", drawing a parallel with 9/11 conspiracy theorists or "truthers". MSNBC political commentator Rachel Maddow defines a "Birther" as:

a specific new breed of American conspiracy theorists who believe that the real problem with Barack Obama being president is that he can't possibly have been born in the United States. He's not eligible to be president. The birth certificate is a fake. He's a foreigner. Once this has been exposed, I guess, he will be run out of the White House and exposed for the alien, communist, Muslim, gay, drug dealer, al Qaeda member that he is ...

A number of conservative commentators have strongly criticized the birth-certificate theorists and their effect on the wider conservative movement. Columnist Michelle Malkin has written that "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. Michael Medved, a prominent conservative talk-show host, has attacked birth-certificate theorists as "crazy, nutburger, demagogue, money-hungry, exploitative, irresponsible, filthy conservative imposters" who are "the worst enemy of the conservative movement" and "make us look sick, troubled and not suitable for civilized company."

An editorial in 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. Factcheck.org notes, "The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department."

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 some day 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."

Some commentators have asserted that racism is a factor motivating the promotion of Obama citizenship conspiracy theories. J. Richard Cohen, the President of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that monitors hate groups and extremism, wrote an e-mail to supporters in July 2009 declaring: "This conspiracy theory was concocted by an anti-Semite and circulated by racist extremists who cannot accept the fact that a black man has been elected president."

Eligibility litigation

Numerous individuals and groups had filed State or Federal lawsuits seeking to have Obama disqualified from standing or being confirmed for the Presidency of the United States, or to compel him to release additional documentation relating to his citizenship. 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. No such suit had resulted in the grant of any relief to the plaintiffs by any court.

A major obstacle to such citizen suits has been lack of standing, as the only plaintiff who was a presidential candidate or presidential elector was Alan Keyes. 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 et al

On August 21, 2008, Pennsylvania attorney Philip J. Berg, a Democrat and former deputy state attorney general, 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.

Berg v. Obama et al is currently pending before the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and scheduled for a merits panel hearing the week of October 26, 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 (see details here) 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.

The case was referred to the Supreme Court by Justice Clarence Thomas. When the case reached the United States Supreme Court on December 8, 2008, the Court declined without comment to hear the case.

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 Supreme 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.

In another lawsuit, plaintiffs, including Keyes, showed the court 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, " although the full transcript of the interview indicates that Obama's grandmother did not raise doubts about his place of birth.

On March 13, 2009, California Superior Court Judge Michael P. Kenny issued a tentative ruling dismissing the case. The Court sustained, without leave to amend, Secretary Bowen's and Obama's demurrers on Keyes' petition for writ of mandate and granted Obama's motion to quash the subpoena. Keyes was found not to be entitled to the records he sought, thereby declaring the case moot.

Hollister v. Soetoro

On March 5, 2009, a lawsuit filed by Philip Berg on behalf of Gregory S. Hollister, a retired Air Force colonel, against Barack Obama (referenced as "Barry Soetoro", a nickname Obama used in elementary school in Indonesia). The suit was dismissed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The presiding judge, James Robertson, said the case was a waste of the court's time, calling Berg and another lawyer "agents provocateurs" and their local counsel, James Hemenway, "a foot soldier in their crusade." He ordered Hemenway to show cause 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."

Cook v. Obama

On February 1, 2009, Stefan F. Cook, a Major in the United States Army Reserve, contacted lawyer Orly Taitz via e-mail, asking to be part of her lawsuit. On May 8, he volunteered to serve for one year in Afghanistan beginning on July 15, 2009. The Army accepted his offer and ordered him to report on that date. On July 8, however, he filed suit seeking a temporary restraining order and status as a conscientious objector, arguing that his deployment orders were invalid because Obama was not a natural-born U.S. citizen, and therefore ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. His orders were thereupon revoked; an Army spokesperson stated, "A reserve soldier who volunteers for an active duty tour may ask for a revocation of orders up until the day he is scheduled to report for active duty." Accordingly, Cook's case was dismissed as moot on July 16.

In the lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia by his attorney, birth-certificate campaigner Orly Taitz, Cook asserted that he "would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the United States under this President's command. [...] simultaneously subjecting himself to possible prosecution as a war criminal by the faithful execution of these duties." In April, before Cook volunteered for deployment to Afghanistan, he had been included in Taitz's list of people she said she represented as plaintiffs, in a letter raising the citizenship issue. A retired Army two-star general and an active reserve US Air Force lieutenant-colonel subsequently joined the Georgia case as plaintiffs alongside Cook. The government, in its reply, stated: "The Commanding General of SOCCENT (United States Special Operations Command Central) has determined that he does not want the services of Major Cook, and has revoked his deployment orders."

After the case was filed, Cook was reported to have been terminated from his civilian job with a defense contractor, after the situation at his company had become "nutty and crazy"; an Army CENTCOM spokesman rejected as false claims that the revocation validated Cook's claims: "This in no way validates any of the outlandish claims made by Maj. Cook or his attorney. The idea that this validates those charges about the president's fitness for office is simply false."

Cook received significant media coverage in July 2009 from Fox News's Sean Hannity. Hannity said in his second of two reports:

We told you Tuesday about an Army reserve soldier who challenged his deployment orders on the grounds that President Obama has not proven he is a U.S. citizen. Major Stefan Frederick Cook, who was supposed to deploy to Afghanistan in the coming days, has had his orders revoked. According to his lawyer, "They just said 'order revoked.' No explanation. No reasons. Just revoked." Major Cook and his lawyer expressed joy at this outcome and took it as an admission on the part of the military that the president is not in fact a legitimate citizen by birth.

— Sean Hannity

Hannity was criticized for publicizing the "birthers" movement. News Hounds wrote:

Fox News had added legitimacy to the irrational and baseless conspiracy-theorist "birthers" who continue to insist, despite evidence to the contrary, that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and [is] thus an illegitimate president. One such effort came from Sean Hannity, reporting on a soldier challenging his deployment to Afghanistan on the grounds that Obama is not eligible to be president. Hannity had failed to note in his report the availability of Obama's birth certificate and how the birther claims have been completely investigated and debunked. Hannity gave an update to the Afghanistan story last night (7/15/09) and took it a step further by suggesting, along with the plaintiff, that the subsequent revocation of the soldiers [sic] deployment orders indicated that his allegations were proved true. But Hannity omitted key details that point to a scam by the soldier. ... Had Hannity bothered to do the simplest of Google searches, he would have also uncovered this key piece of information from that day's Georgia Ledger-Enquirer [sic] newspaper.... So, Maj. Cook filed a request to serve the Commander-in-Chief in Afghanistan on May 8, well after Obama had assumed the presidency, but now, about two months later, is claiming that Obama is not qualified to be president. And instead of going through the administrative process to revoke his orders, which would seem to be a pro forma matter, he sued in federal court.

— News Hounds , citing The Ledger-Enquirer

After the lawsuit was reported in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, the newspaper reported receiving "the highest volume of traffic ever by a single story in the history of ledger-enquirer.com, including written threats against the newspaper", with nearly half a million new readers and hundreds of e-mails. The threats prompted an increase in security around the courthouse where Cook's case was heard, as well as precautions being taken to protect the author of the newspaper's reports on the case. Executive Editor Ben Holden noted: "The chatter had the feel of a righteous cause – almost a religious cause – because some people hate this president."

"Citizen grand juries"

Some campaigners, led by Georgia activist Carl Swensson, have sought to "finally expose the conspiracy behind President Obama's birth certificate" by forming what they term "citizen grand juries" to indict Obama. The "grand juries" are based on the Fifth Amendment's premise that "no person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury". Although the activists managed to hand out copies of "indictments" to Congressional staff, the courts have not regarded the "citizen grand juries" favorably. In June 2009, a group of 172 campaigners declared themselves to be a "Super American Grand Jury" and voted to charge Obama with treason and accused him of not being a US citizen. Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the "indictment" on July 2 and declared: "[T]here is no authority under the Rules of Procedure or in the statutes of the United States for this court to accept [a presentment]... The individuals who have made this presentment were not convened by this court to sit as a grand jury nor have they been selected at random from a fair cross section of this district. Any self-styled indictment or presentment issued by such a group has no force under the Constitution or laws of the United States."

Political impact

Birth-certificate-related items, such as bumper stickers have shown up on many cars recently

Although claims about Obama's citizenship were evaluated in 2008 by the McCain Campaign and ultimately rejected, they became a significant issue among sections of the political right. By mid-2009, the citizenship issue was one of the hottest and most lucrative sources of fundraising for organizations on the right that raise funds through direct mail and telemarketing. Online petition sites such as that of Alan Keyes, who has been collecting signatures on the birth certificate issue, are a major source for generating mailing lists of movement conservatives. The right-wing WorldNetDaily website published more than 200 articles on the subject by July 2009 and has sold billboards, bumper stickers and postcards asking "Where's the birth certificate?" and similar slogans in an effort which has "already raised tens of thousands of dollars."

Moderate conservatives have found themselves "bombarded with birther stuff". Protesters at the Tea Party protests in 2009 carried signs about the birth certificate issue, some of which were recommended by protest organizers. In an incident that attracted widespread media coverage, moderate Republican Representative Michael Castle was booed and heckled during a July 2009 town hall meeting in Georgetown, Delaware, when he told a woman protesting about Obama's birth certificate: "if you’re referring to the president there, he is a citizen of the United States." NBC Nightly News reported that other members of Congress often hear the issue too; an anonymous congressmen told the program that he was reluctant to advertise his own town hall meetings for fear of this issue drowning out everything else.

A number of Republican legislators have, controversially, proposed legislation and constitutional amendments at the state and federal levels to address issues raised by the birth certificate campaigners (see Legislative initiatives and responses below). Mainstream Republicans are said to "want the issue to go away", seeing it as a distraction. Democratic commentators have criticized the reluctance of some Republicans to distance themselves from the proponents of the conspiracy theories, suggesting that "Republican officials are reluctant to denounce the birthers for fear of alienating an energetic part of their party's base". NBC News' "First Read" team commented: "the real story in all of this is that Republican Party has a HUGE problem with its base right now." Republican National Committee Chairman, Michael Steele released a statement through his spokesperson saying, "Chairman Steele believes that this is an unnecessary distraction and believes that the president is a U.S. citizen."

Conservative Joel B. Pollak writing for The American Thinker has stated that the reason the "Birther theory" has caught on particularly among conservatives, is the weakness of the Republican opposition, stating:

In the absence of strong Republican leadership, some find the Birther theory a compelling, if desperate, solution. Yet it is ultimately a self-destructive one - not just because it is almost certainly false, but because it contradicts the essential spirit of the conservative movement.

Political analyst Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic and CBS News, suggests that the birther phenomenon goes to the heart of the dilemma now facing the Republican Party, positing that

Republican presidential candidates need to figure out how to diffuse angry birthers who are bound to show up and demand their attention. If they give credence to the birthers, they're not only advancing ignorance but also betraying the narrowness of their base. If they dismiss this growing movement, they might drive birthers to find more extreme candidates, which will fragment a Republican political coalition.

Opinion surveys

In October 2008, the Orange County Register's OC Political Pulse poll found that a third of responding Republicans believed that Obama had been born outside the United States. 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.

An opinion poll carried out for Daily Kos by Research 2000 in July 2009 found that 77 percent of Americans believed that Obama was born in the US, while 11 percent didn't, and 12 percent were unsure. However, Republicans and Southerners were far more likely than other political or demographic groups to doubt that Obama was born in the United States. 58 percent of Republicans either believed that Obama was not born in the US (28 percent) or were not sure (30 percent), with 42 percent believing that he was. An overwhelming majority of Democrats (93 percent) and independents (83 percent) believed that he was born in the US. Support for the belief that Obama was born outside the US was strongest in the South, where only 47 percent of those polled believed he was born in the US, compared with an average of 90 percent of residents of the Northeast, Midwest and West. A marked racial disparity was also apparent. Although racial minorities overwhelmingly believed that Obama was born in the US, as many as three quarters of Southern whites were said to have doubted the official account of Obama's birthplace. 'The Politico's congressional reporter, Glenn Thrush, commented that the Research 2000 poll "explains why Republicans, including Roy Blunt, are playing footsie with the Birther fringe." Writing on National Journal's Pollster.com blog, Brendan Nyhan observed that the poll "suggests that the encouragement of the birth certificate myth by conservative pundits and Republican politicians has begun to activate the GOP base on this issue."

A Public Policy Polling survey carried out in August 2009 found that only 32% of Republicans in Virginia thought that Obama was born in the US. 41% thought he was foreign-born and the remaining 27% were unsure.

Comfort of conspiracy

To find out why the birthers' claims have endured, CBS News contacted Dr. Michael Barkun, an expert in conspiracy theories and professor of political science at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. According to Barkun:

There are people out there who firmly believe that the truth is always hidden, regardless of whether it's about politics or science or any other subject. That whatever is presented as public knowledge is necessarily false. That the truth is always hidden from them, regardless of what the subject is.

Pressed on why that is the case, Barkun pointed to the ability of the Internet and to a lesser extent television to disseminate conspiracy theories far more easily than ever before. He also added that, conspiracy theories are comforting, remarking that:

They give people a feeling that we know the truth, That we have secret knowledge, and that we know how the world really works. In a sense, we're part of a kind of elite of those who know and everybody else is misled or are trapped by illusions.

Legislative initiatives and responses

The controversy over Obama's citizenship and eligibility for the presidency has prompted a number of Republican state and federal legislators to propose legislation aimed at requiring future presidential candidates to release copies of their birth certificates. Some legislators also lent their support to birth certificate-related litigation against Obama, joining as co-plaintiffs.

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 Oklahoma Republican Senators Tom Coburn and James Inhofe to persuade them to mount a challenge to Obama's confirmation by Congress. The bill, House Bill 1329, was criticized by The Norman Transcript newspaper as "an outright attempt to embarrass President Barack Obama whose own citizenship was questioned, mostly by those pajama guerrillas trolling on the Internet." The bill narrowly failed to become law, attracting a 23-20 vote in favour but failing to meet the 25-vote threshold required to pass.

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: "Yes, people may say, you're just chasing some conspiracy theory... (but) it's a simple act on his part to just do, and we're done — move on." The alternative newspaper Nashville Scene described Swafford as joining a "wacky legal action" and quoted Tennessee house Democrat Larry Miller as saying: "What is the mentality of these kind of people who continuously make these kind of goofy statements? It's embarrassing." Attorney Orly Taitz of California said she planned to file the suit, representing the "Defend Our Freedoms Foundation."

Fifteen Republican members of the 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 offices to be affected would be the President and Vice President, which are the only two positions 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". The proposed amendment, House Joint Resolution No. 34, was subsequently withdrawn.

A number of Missouri Republican politicians have continued to support claims and litigation on the citizenship issue. State Representatives Cynthia L. Davis, Timothy W. Jones and Casey Guernsey have committed to participating as plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in Missouri challenging Obama's citizenship. State Representative Edgar G. H. Emery told reporters in July 2009 that he "questions Obama’s citizenship and ... believes his alleged lack of a legitimate birth certificate ignores the Constitution."

Congress

Some activists 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 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.

In March 2009, Representative Bill Posey, a newly elected Republican from Florida's 15th congressional district, introduced a bill, H.R. 1503, in the U.S. House of Representatives. It would amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require candidates for the Presidency "to include with the [campaign] committee's statement of organization a copy of the candidate's birth certificate" plus supporting documentation. The bill did not initially have any co-sponsors and was introduced without the Republican leadership being informed. Florida Today, the newspaper serving his constituency, commented that the bill "stems from fringe opponents of President Barack Obama who, during the 2008 election campaign, questioned whether Obama was born in Hawaii," but added that Posey's office "does not question Obama's citizenship." Posey explained his motivation as being to "prevent something like this [controversy] from happening in the future" by requiring "the birth certificate up front and take [the issue] off the table", but would not be drawn on whether or not he believed Obama was a citizen of the United States, saying that "I can't swear on a stack of Bibles whether he is or isn't". His initiative was strongly criticized by Florida Democrats, who accused Posey of trying to "fan the rumors on the extreme fringe of the Republican Party" and "pandering to the right wing". The satirist Stephen Colbert also mocked Posey for not addressing rumors that he was "part alligator"; Posey responded by commenting that there was "no reason to say that I'm the illegitimate grandson of an alligator." He also stated that there was now "no reason to question" that Obama is a US citizen. Despite the criticism, Posey's bill has gained the support of ten Republican co-sponsors - Representatives John R. Carter, John Culberson, Randy Neugebauer and Ted Poe (Texas), Rep. John Campbell (California), Rep. Bob Goodlatte (Virginia), Rep. Dan Burton (Indiana), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee), Kenny Marchant (Texas) and Louie Gohmert (Texas).,

Republican Senator Tom Coburn (Oklahoma) also stated that he would "likely support it" if the bill reached the Senate, but acknowledged that Obama "meets the constitutional requirement to be president".

On July 27, the House of Representatives passed a resolution commemorating the 50th aniversary of Hawaii's statehood. The resolution, containing language recognizing Hawaii as President Obama's birth state, passed by a vote of 378 to zero,. Some of the cosponsors of the Posey bill, namely Campbell, Carter, and Marchant did not cast a vote.

Official White House response

Part of the claims of the birther movement is that if Obama released his "long form" birth certificate it will end all speculations. Commentators, however, advised that it would not be advantageous for him to do that for several reasons. First, it would raise questions as to why it took him so long to release the "long form". Second, it would hand his political adversaries a victory as it would show that he caved in to their demand; and last, it would open the door to demands for many other records from his life that have nothing to do with his birth.

Nonetheless, Obama's press secretary did have to field questions on the issue on a couple of different occasions.

May 27

At a end of the May 27, 2009 press briefing, WorldNetDaily reporter Lester Kinsolving asked about President Obama's birth certificate. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs quickly replied "It's on the Internet", to which Kinsolving responded "No, no, no -- the long form listing his hospital and physician." Gibbs responded as follows:

Lester, this question in many ways continues to astound me. The state of Hawaii provided a copy with the seal of the President's birth. I know there are apparently at least 400,000 people -- (laughter) -- that continue to doubt the existence of and the certification by the state of Hawaii of the President's birth there, but it's on the Internet because we put it on the Internet for each of those 400,000 to download.

July 27

At a July 27, 2009 press briefing, radio talk show host Bill Press asked Robert Gibbs if there was anything he could say to make the issue go away. Gibbs answered, "No. I mean, the God’s honest truth is no," because "nothing will assuage" those who continue to pursue what he called "made-up, fictional nonsense" despite the evidence that Barack Obama has already provided.

See also

• Birthright citizenship in the United States of America

External links

• The Truth About Obama's Birth Certificate by FactCheck.org
• False Rumor about Obama's Birth Certificate from Snopes.com
• Email Hoax: Occidental College Transcripts Reveal Foreign Citizenship from Urban Legends
• Culture of Conspiracy: The Birthers by The Politico

Multimedia video

• The Daily Show: "The Born Identity" July 22, 2009
• Gordon Liddy on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews July 23, 2009
• The Colbert Report: "Womb Raiders" Part 1 and Part 2 with Orly Taitz July 28, 2009
• Real Time with Bill Maher: New Rules - Warning On Birthers July 31, 2009