Columns, Criminal law, Politics

Recon By Fire: House Democrats Seek To Prove Nothing Succeeds Like Excess

Below is my column on the curious approach of the House Democrats investigating Trump. Whatever this might be, it is not a particularly promising way to build a case for impeachment.

Here is the column:

The House Judiciary Committee has announced that it is prepared to fire off more than 80 subpoenas to individuals and organizations, the first salvo in its investigation of President Trump. The flurry of subpoenas seems to follow Oscar Wilde’s rule that “moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” Yet, if the purpose of these subpoenas is impeachment, as suggested by many members, this is not the way to go about.

Faced with the prospect that special counsel Robert Mueller might not find evidence of collusion, Democrats seem to be shifting toward a range of alleged transactional and collateral crimes by Trump, including many committed before he took office. It is what the military calls “recon by fire” — shooting at any possible enemy positions to see who jumps up. Trump unquestionably presents a target-rich environment, but if Democrats continue this approach they are likely to run out of time — and the public could run out of patience.

As the last lead defense counsel in the last impeachment trial, none of this looks to me like a promising way to build an impeachment case. Such cases take focus and time to develop. Take my trial involving Judge Thomas Porteous Jr., which the judiciary transmitted to the House in June 2008. Despite being impeached unanimously by the House, the Senate trial was not completed until December 2010. That was 16 months on a case that was already investigated by the courts. There are roughly 20 months until the next presidential election, and the Democratic strategy will likely enable Trump to slow things down.

Few members of Congress, and fewer citizens, would support an effort to remove a president in his final year in office and shortly before the 2020 election. Ideally, the House committees have about 12 months to make and prosecute a case for impeachment. The fastest model was Bill Clinton’s impeachment, in which the House broke from tradition and dispensed with its own investigation. It used independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s report to take articles of impeachment quickly to the House floor. That was justified on grounds that Starr supplied a detailed, lengthy record of alleged violations.

Democrats are now pursuing the traditional approach of conducting their own investigation, and the better comparison is with the Watergate impeachment. However, any comparison raises more questions about the real purpose behind these subpoenas and whether Democrats are undermining the chances for an actual impeachment.

Schedule

From the outset, the Watergate committees had more time and limited their court fights to prevent Richard Nixon from running out the clock. Nixon was sworn into his second term on Jan. 20, 1973. The House Select Committee was formed the following month, and Nixon resigned in August 1974, roughly 17 months later. That was roughly the same period as the last impeachment process involving Judge Porteous.

Even if today’s House could follow the same pace, any trial would occur with an election just months away — and that’s without the delay of multiple subpoena fights. It takes little to drag out such fights for years, as demonstrated by the Obama administration, which routinely opposed congressional subpoenas.  

Staff

The Watergate committees selected counsel with no prior positions on the merits of the investigation. The lead counsel was Sam Dash, a career prosecutor widely accepted as unbiased and fair, who carefully avoided any appearance of prejudging the evidence. Indeed, years later, he resigned as Ken Starr’s ethics adviser because he felt Starr’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee left the appearance of being an “advocate” rather than an impartial investigator.

The selection of some of the investigating counsel by the current House leadership already is being attacked as having prejudged the evidence. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) hired former prosecutor and NBC News legal analyst Daniel Goldman, who previously called Trump a “shameful” person who “doesn’t care about the country” and who “ ‘looks bad’ because he committed a crime.”–

Meanwhile, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) hired Norm Eisen, who handled ethics questions for President Obama and was a CNN commentator. Eisen declared months ago that the criminal case for collusion was “devastating” and that Trump is “colluding in plain sight.” He also was the counsel in a court action accusing Trump of accepting unconstitutional emoluments through his family hotels and property.

Subpoenas

Trump has dismissed the storm of affidavits as a “fishing expedition” and indicated he would fight back. The Obama administration, he said, “didn’t give one letter” to congressional investigators. That isn’t exactly true; President Obama produced considerable evidence but also resisted many congressional demands — with the support of current Democratic leaders.

The Obama administration tied up Congress in the courts, and the Trump administration could easily do the same. The best way to win such fights is to show a court that Congress has made focused, circumspect use of subpoena authority — but with subpoenas rapidly passing the 100 mark on an expanding array of subjects, courts may be less sympathetic with Congress in balancing executive privilege against congressional oversight.

Scope

The Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities was set up in the Senate to investigate the Watergate break-in, the subsequent cover-up and crimes related to the 1972 presidential election. The success of the House and Senate Watergate committees was their focus on crimes known by President Nixon during his presidency; they ultimately flipped public opinion – and many Republican lawmakers – into supporting impeachment.

Today’s polling shows the same challenge exists. A Quinnipiac University survey shows that 64 percent of voters believe President Trump broke the law before taking office but only 45 percent believe he has committed crimes in office. More importantly, 59 percent said Congress should not begin impeachment proceedings against him. In light of the timeline, one would expect Democrats to focus on clearly impeachable acts in an effort to turn public opinion. There are legitimate matters to investigate, including some alleged crimes extending into his term of office, like election fraud.

Yet, even before receiving the Mueller report, House investigators are ordering Trump family members, past business associates, former banks and others to turn over documents on matters far removed not only from Russian collusion but the actual Trump presidency. Rather than pursue alleged crimes before Trump took office, Congress should follow the Watergate model and focus on claims of obstruction and other abuses of presidential power.

Of course, that depends on whether Congress is seriously pursuing impeachable offenses or just trying to wound a president who is polling around 46 percent popularity. Democrats clearly want to see investigations aplenty but less obvious is whether their leadership actually wants to remove Trump. Indeed, that may be the last thing they want to do. The current strategy would allow Democrats to pump rounds into the White House and then, with the approaching election, declare that the ultimate decision will be left to voters. And that would follow another rule from Oscar Wilde — that “the only way to be rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

208 thoughts on “Recon By Fire: House Democrats Seek To Prove Nothing Succeeds Like Excess”

    1. The editorial states that free speech means no limits on money in politics and that federalism guarantees the right of state legislatures to gerrymander their districts, both behaviors that disenfranchise voters. The editorial also raises concerns about the privacy rights of donors to political activity and there may be merit to that argument. If the GOP Senate wasn’t bound by it’s campaign to maintain relevance and power while losing voters they might work on a version mitigating the latter issue and pass a bill that could be accepted by the HOuse and gain real reform.

      They won’t. Principle doesn’t survive in conflict with survival.

      1. “Principle doesn’t survive in conflict with survival.”

        Principle can survive conflict but it may not be able to survive with the lack of principle that we see on the left.

  2. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/adam-schiff-glenn-simpson-and-their-forrest-gump-like-encounter-in-aspen/ar-BBTjjxC

    Havn’t seen this bit o news on CNN——————–>>>>>

    “Which bring us to the issue of some photographs taken at the prestigious Aspen security conference last July.

    They show Schiff meeting at the event with Fusion GPS Founder Glenn Simpson, one of the key and most controversial figures in the Russia collusion scandal. Both men insisted to me through spokesmen that they met only briefly last July.

    At the time of the encounter, Simpson was an important witness in the House Intelligence Committee probe who had given sworn testimony about alleged, but still unproven, collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

    Simpson ran the firm hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party to find dirt on Trump in Moscow. He employed retired British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, whose infamous and unverified dossier became the main evidence for the FBI’s probe of the Trump campaign, particularly the surveillance warrant against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

    And by the time of the meeting, the House Intelligence Committee had already received evidence from a senior Justice Department official, Bruce Ohr, that called into question Simpson’s testimony to lawmakers.

    Specifically, Simpson claimed he had not begun meeting with Ohr until after Thanksgiving 2016, well after the FBI had begun investigating Trump-Russia collusion and after the presidential election in which Simpson’s client, Clinton, lost to Trump.

    But Ohr provided compelling evidence, including calendar notations, testimony and handwritten notes, showing that Simpson met with him in August 2016, well before the election and during a time when Steele was helping the FBI start an investigation into Trump.

    When confronted with the Aspen conference photos of Schiff, in sport coat and open-neck dress shirt, and Simpson, wearing casual attire, representatives for both men tried to minimize their discussion, insisting nothing substantive about the Russia case was discussed.

    “In the summer of 2018, Mr. Simpson attended a media-sponsored social event where he exchanged small talk with Rep. Schiff and many other people who were in attendance,” Fusion GPS said in a statement to me. “The conversation between the two was brief and did not cover anything substantive. There has been no subsequent contact between Mr. Simpson and Rep. Schiff.”

    The congressman’s response was even more vague: “The chairman did not have any pre-planned meeting with Glenn Simpson, and any conversation with him at the Aspen conference would have been brief and social in nature,” Schiff spokesman Patrick Boland said.

    Translation: This was just a Forrest Gump-like moment in which the Democrats’ chief defender of the dossier and the man whose firm produced it met serendipitously.

    There is nothing illegal or technically improper about a congressman meeting, intentionally or unintentionally, with a witness in an investigation. At least not under the law or the House Intelligence Committee’s rules.

    But Schiff created a far higher standard two years ago when he demanded that his Republican counterpart on the committee, then-Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), be investigated for having meetings with national security council officials at the Trump White House without telling the committee. Schiff’s attacks led Nunes to temporarily recuse himself from the Russia probe.

    Schiff assailed Nunes’s contacts with a source outside the committee confines as “a dead-of-night excursion” and said it called into question the impartiality of the inquiry because the committee wasn’t informed.

    “I believe the public cannot have the necessary confidence that matters involving the president’s campaign or transition team can be objectively investigated or overseen by the chairman,” Schiff said at the time.

    So how did Schiff meet his own standards? Boland declined to say if his boss told the committee about his Simpson contact.

    But both GOP and Democratic officials on the committee, including some lawmakers, said there is no evidence that Schiff disclosed his contact with Simpson to committee members.

    “I don’t know if they’re under any obligation to disclose it but, certainly if we were conspiracy theorists the way that my Democrat colleagues appear to be, we could weave an awful tale into that and weave all kinds of nonsense about it,” Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican who took over the Russia probe when Nunes recused himself, told Hill.TV.

    “Had the tables been turned and I had been seen at a circumstance like that, my guess is [Schiff] would have demanded I had a full conversation as to what I did,” he added.

    Conaway touched on another observation.

    Simpson has become a Gump-like character who keeps showing up in so many different places in the Russia scandal: He’s the owner of the company that was paid by Clinton for the Steele dossier, the guy who hired Steele to create the dossier, the one who met with Ohr at the Justice Department, who pitched reporters writing Trump dirt at the end of the campaign and who met with the Russian woman and an American lobbyist at the heart of the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

    And then, he shows up with Schiff in Aspen.

    “It’s interesting that Simpson is at the heart of the dossier and the dossier played a mighty role in not only going after Carter Page but in much of Adam’s and Eric Swalwell’s [D-Calif.] quest to find collusion, that [Schiff] would in fact in that exact same conversation, or time frame, be in conversation or appear to be in conversation with the guy who’s principally responsible for the dossier,” Conaway said.

    Whatever happened in Aspen won’t stay in Aspen much longer. Expect Republicans in Washington to launch some questions at the House’s new Intelligence Committee chairman.”

  4. Did you know that if you carefully rearrange the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in just such a way that none of them fit together, then the big picture that fails to emerge bears an uncanny resemblance to . . . A) a kaleidoscope, B) a drug-induced hallucination, C) a Cubist painting, D) Donald Trump’s last-best legal defense against conspiracy charges?????

  5. Is stupidity a valid defense against conspiracy charges? The commentary of Chris Christie on the teevee in recent weeks would lead you to believe that Trump, his son, his son-in-law, his personal lawyer/fixer, his campaign manager, his deputy campaign manager and his old pal the dirty trickster had no idea whatsoever that they were conspiring with Russians to receive an illegal foreign campaign contribution from Russia in the form of the Russian hack-and-leak operation for the purpose of electioneering communications in a U.S. election. Instead, they were just doing it without any knowledge of what they were doing. They are not saying that they did not “willfully” accept an illegal foreign campaign contribution. They are saying that they did not “knowingly” accept an illegal foreign campaign contribution. Because they did not know that what the Russians were doing was an illegal foreign campaign contribution. And so the question ought to have been, “Is rank stupidity a valid defense against conspiracy charges???”

  6. Mueller’s grand jury issued many search warrants for the communications records of the twelve GRU officers who conducted the Russian hack-and-leak operation in the 2016 U. S. election. Those GRU communications records included communications between the GRU and Julian Assange of Wikileaks, communications between the GRU and Roger Stone and, most tellingly of all, communications between Assange and Stone discovered in the communications records of the GRU. Think about that.

    What were the communications between Stone and Assange doing in the possession of the twelve GRU officers who conducted the Russian hack-and-leak operation in 2016? Did the GRU hack Julian Assange? No. Assange communicated with the GRU. Did the GRU hack Roger Stone? No. Roger Stone communicated with the GRU. Consequently, the communications between Assange and Stone took place through the GRU–under the auspices of Russian military intelligence.

    There may a question remaining as to whether Stone knew that he was communicating with Russian military intelligence officers. But it’s doubtful that Assange was in the dark about communicating with the Russian military intelligence officers who had disseminated the hacked emails to and through Assange. Moreover, several of the communications between Assange and Stone caused Stone to disavow his previous claim that Guccifer 2.0 was Russian military intelligence. It looks like Assange told Stone to stop talking about who, exactly, had disseminated the hacked emails to and through Assange; namely, the GRU (a.k.a. Russian military intelligence).

  8. OT: Peter, I just read this piece on climate change and since we argued about it in the past I thought you might be interested in it because it is easy to read and non judgemental. This is based on a discussion with a climatologist who says it the way she sees it. She is one of the climatologists that supposedly doesn’t exist.

    2 quotes, but plenty more for a better understanding of the situation. “Nowadays, public funding, scientific awards, and academic promotions go to the environmentally correct.” “In 2005, I had a conversation with Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian railway engineer, who remade himself into a climatologist and became director of the IPCC, which received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize under his tenure. Pachauri told me, without embarrassment, that, at the UN, he recruited only climatologists convinced of the carbon-dioxide warming explanation, excluding all others.” I am sure that you can see from these quotes why it appears to some that the science is settled when it most definitely is not.

    I think it is worth your time to read.

    https://www.city-journal.org/global-warming?utm_source=City+Journal+Update&utm_campaign=f2d6da360f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_03_08_06_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6c08930f2b-f2d6da360f-109320877

    2. Alan, you’re getting more like Estovir; creating fogs of text to blur the comment space .

      Are you an interesting writer? Should we want your view? Does Alan seem hip to anyone younger than retirement age?

      These are questions Alan should ponder ‘before’ he simply posts.

      1. Peter, the article I posted was for you because I saw earlier that your understanding of “climate change” lacked depth. You earlier believed there were no credible climatologist’s that didn’t agree with the present “consensus”. I had given you a host of names so I thought a new name in a non judgemental artice would provide you with a different view that wasn’t specifically denying what you believe.

        The answer to all your questions is Not Applicable. Is your mind really that closed?

        1. Alan, if you think you’re going to successfully refute Climate Change on Jonathan Turely’s comment thread, that’s a symptom of delusional thinking. Science has moved-on from this debate. You’re stuck in a time warp.

          1. “You’re stuck in a time warp.”

            Peter, your lack of openess to any ideas but those that exist in your mind, placed there by strict attention to only one type of media, demonstrates a small mind that cannot grow.

            This article was not meant to refute climate change and if you actually read it or if you actually understood it then you would have realized that this was not the intention of the article. The intention was more to show diversity of opinion and how fragile the arguments for or against man made global warming are.

            Your problem is that your lack of knowledge makes you grasp onto hard positions provided to you that you do not understand. By refusing to look at the diversity of opinion you are saved from the problem of having to think.

          2. What’ll it be next week? You clowns started with global warming and that was morphed into climate change after your lies, fabrications and fraud were revealed:

            “Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws
            Exclusive: Key study by East Anglia professor Phil Jones was based on suspect figures
            • How the location of weather stations in China undermines data
            • How the ‘climategate’ scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics’ lies
            First published on Mon 1 Feb 2010 16.00 EST
            Professor Phil Jones, who was director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and a professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Photograph: University of East Anglia
            Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based.
            A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.
            Jones and a collaborator have been accused by a climate change sceptic and researcher of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that could cast doubt on a key 1990 study on the effect of cities on warming – a hotly contested issue.”

            – Guardian

            Of course, there is climate change. There has been planetary change too. The earth didn’t even exist 4.5 billion years ago. That’s some real change for ya – from nothing to planet earth. There are 91 active volcanoes under Antarctica. I don’t suppose they and global volcanoes have spewed “pollutants” into the atmosphere for eons. There is no such thing as anthropomorphic climate change. If man could form the atmosphere and climate, the planetary thermostat would have been set at a perfect 72 degrees, entirely bereft of clouds, wind, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. a long time ago. What a bunch of hysterical and incoherent wackjobs. What you communists are doing is establishing an “enemy” around which to rally your communist troops – you are brainwashing the young and vulnerable. Your fraud has been found out. Your ultimate communist goal is “free stuff” plain and simple. You are deathly afraid of the American thesis of Freedom, Free Enterprise and Self-Reliance. Whatever will you do without support and subsistence provided by the state?
            _____

            “Our results therefore support the notion that such politicians need enemies to maintain their political advantage and act so as to keep the enemy alive.”

            – “The Need for Enemies” – Leopoldo Fergusson, James A. Robinson, Ragnar Torvik, Juan F. Vargas

  10. The Democrats in the House aren’t relying on the Mueller report for a couple of reasons: 1. When will it be submitted? 2. Even after it is submitted to the AG, there is no guarantee that the AG will make it generally available. It’s clear that Trump has done a number of things that bear scrutiny, e.g. violation of the election law, witness tampering. I doubt that they will follow all paths but will pick those most likely to resonate with the public.

    1. Heaven bless you, bettykath, Hang in there. It’s not over until it’s over.

    2. Yes, and I hope they investigate in an honest and deliberate way. That would make me happy. And, I like cake, too.

    3. “…Trump has done a number of things that bear scrutiny,…”

      What about Obongo being in clear violation of the fundamental law of the Constitution which requires a candidate for the office of the president to be a “natural born citizen,” which he will never be, while candidates for Congress or the Senate are required to be merely a “citizen?” Obongo’s violation must be considered an egregious and treasonous crime of high office. Further, Obongo knew full well that he was violating the fundamental law of the Constitution as he completed his high school application stating unequivocally that he was an Indonesian citizen for which he must have renounced his U.S. citizenship and been fully cognizant of the fact that he was demonstrating his failure to maintain allegiance to the United States of America.

      1. “natural born citizen,” which he will never be,

        He was born in Honolulu, to a mother who was born in Kansas. His maternal grandparents were born in Kansas. His maternal side great-grandparents were born in Illinois and Kansas. His great-great grandparents were born in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Arkansas, and Kentucky.

        1. Do your homework. His high school application states that Barry Soetoro is an Indonesian citizen. He must have renounced his U.S. citizenship. Did he?

          Barry Soetoro and Kamala Harris will NEVER be eligible to be U.S. president.

          Barry Soetoro and Kamala Harris’ parents were foreign citizens at the time of their birth.

          – A “citizen” could only have been President at the time of the adoption of the Constitution – not after.

          – The U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5, requires the President to be a “natural born citizen,” which, by definition in the Law of Nations, requires “parents who are citizens” at the time of birth of the candidate and that he be “…born of a father who is a citizen;…”

          – Ben Franklin thanked Charles Dumas for copies of the Law of Nations which “…has been continually in the hands of the members of our Congress, now sitting,…”

          – The Jay/Washington letter of July, 1787, raised the presidential requirement from citizen to “natural born citizen” to place a “strong check” against foreign allegiances by the commander-in-chief.

          – Every American President before Obama had two parents who were American citizens.

          – The Constitution is not a dictionary and does not define words like “natural born citizen” as a dictionary, while the Law of Nations,1758, did.

          ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

          Law of Nations, Vattel, 1758

          Book 1, Ch. 19

          § 212. Citizens and natives.

          “The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.”

          ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

          Ben Franklin letter December 9, 1775, thanking Charles Dumas for 3 copies of the Law of Nations:

          “…I am much obliged by the kind present you have made us of your edition of Vattel. It came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising state make it necessary frequently to consult the law of nations. Accordingly that copy, which I kept, (after depositing one in our own public library here, and sending the other to the College of Massachusetts Bay, as you directed,) has been continually in the hands of the members of our Congress, now sitting, who are much pleased with your notes and preface, and have entertained a high and just esteem for their author…”

          ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

          To George Washington from John Jay, 25 July 1787

          From John Jay

          New York 25 July 1787

          Dear Sir

          I was this morning honored with your Excellency’s Favor of the 22d

          Inst: & immediately delivered the Letter it enclosed to Commodore

          Jones, who being detained by Business, did not go in the french Packet,

          which sailed Yesterday.

          Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to

          provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the

          administration of our national Government, and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the

          american army shall not be given to, nor devolved on, any but a natural born Citizen.

          Mrs Jay is obliged by your attention, and assures You of her perfect

          Esteem & Regard—with similar Sentiments the most cordial and sincere

          I remain Dear Sir Your faithful Friend & Servt

          John Jay

          1. Do your homework. His high school application states that Barry Soetoro is an Indonesian citizen.

            I’m mildly interested to know from which meme generator you acquired this factoid. Or where you acquired the idea that a youth of 10 can ‘renounce’ his citizenship. No more than mildly, however.

            Betwixt and between tossing chaff at me, it might occur to you to examine the U.S. Code in effect in 1961.

            2. I know, I know. Your next hysterical and incoherent claim will be that the document is fabricated and fraudulent; except it isn’t.

              Next question.

            3. Correction: “High school” is incorrect.

              Elementary school is correct.

              Barry Soetoro stated that he was an Indonesian citizen on his ELEMENTARY school application.

        2. Barack Obama, AKA Barry Soetoro, was born of a foreign citizen with foreign allegiances which the requirement of “natural born citizen” was deliberately designed to preclude as noted in the Jay/Washington letter, dated 25 July, 1787. Barry Soetoro’s biological father at the time of Barry Soetoro’s birth was a citizen of Kenya.

          To wit,

          Barack Obama Sr. was born in 1936 in Rachuonyo District[10] on the shores of Lake Victoria just outside Kendu Bay, British Kenya, at the time a colony and protectorate of the British Empire. He was raised in the village of Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Nyanza Province.[11] His family are members of the Luo ethnic group.

          – Wiki

          1. He was born in the United States of an American citizen. This isn’t arguable George.

            1. The American Founders used the legal text and reference of the era, the Law of Nations, to define “natural born citizen.”

              The Constitution is not a dictionary.

              Washington and Jay specifically precluded foreign allegiances by the commander-in-chief through employment of the phrase in the Law of Nations, “natural born citizen” and Ben Franklin thanked Dumas in a letter for copies of the Law of Nations which were continually “…in the hands of the Members of our Congress, now sitting.”

              The candidate must have two parents who are citizens and he must have a father who is a citizen.

              Obongo did not have two parents who were citizens at the time of the candidate’s birth and Obongo did not have a father who was a citizen at the time of the candidate’s birth.

              All presidents before Obongo had TWO parents who were citizens at the time of birth of the candidate.

              All of the pertinent facts which you chose to ignore are published above.

              You just hate facts, huh?

            2. That is not arguable and it makes Barry Soetoro, AKA Barack Obama, a “citizen” and a “citizen” only and not a “natural born citizen” making him ineligible for the office of the president while he is eligible to be a Senator or Congressman.

              Next question.

        3. Read. The proof is in the pudding. The proof is in the math. All presidents (Chester Arthur lied about his parents’ citizenship) before Barry Soetoro had TWO parents who were citizens at the time of the candidate’s birth with the sole exception of candidates at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.

          1. So what, George? The notion that Barack Obama was or ever has been carrying the citizenship of a foreign country has no reality outside your imagination.

            1. So what?

              So the Constitution of the Untied States.

              Ever heard of it.

              It is the fundamental law of the U.S.

              It requires the president to be a “natural born citizen” while Congressmen and Senators need only be a “citizen.”

              1. Correction: “High school” is incorrect.

                Elementary school is correct.

                Barry Soetoro stated that he was an Indonesian citizen on his ELEMENTARY school application.

      2. Excellent! Yet again. you come through with some entertaining wackjobbery. Please post more materials Just. Like, This. Pro tip: Even the professional wingnuts have given up on this one; You just keep doin’ you, though.

        this is to “why can’t we have some more BENGHAZI(!) hearings”? paulie – georgie

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