NJ CITIZEN CHALLENGING OBAMA AND McCAIN ELIGIBILITY CITES LAW IN SUPPORT OF CONTENTIONS BEFORE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT

I anticipate that the erroneous legal conclusions stated today by blogger Jeff Schrieber of the Americasright blog may be echoed further and so I will use the following argument to counter Mr. Schreiber's false contentions and to pre-empt any future false assertions.

Today, Mr.Schreiber posted a story concerning legal issues in my pending US Supreme Court case seeking to challenge the 2008 Presidential national election. Mr. Schreiber failed to even link to this blog.  I have quoted selected erroneous statements made by Mr. Schreiber with my comments following below:

"First, Donofrio provides no support whatsoever to his interpretation that the word “natural,” in the context of Article II, Section 1, means as he maintains it does, “unencumbered by the laws of any other nation.”

The evidence is contained directly in the 14th Amendment, where it clearly states that people born in the US are "citizens", as long as they are "subject to the jurisdiction of the US". The 14th Amendment does not grant "natural born citizen" status.  

Mr. Schreiber may not agree with my evidence/arguments, but he has no right to say I provided "No support whatsoever."  I've cited legislative history as well as the direct wording of the Constitution itself.  The most important piece of evidence I provide is that the 14th Amendment only confers "citizen" status as that is the word used by the Amendment itself.  It is Mr. Schreiber who adds an implication to the actual wording of our Constitution's 14 Amendment, I do not.  

The wording is clear in that the 14th Amendment confers citizenship.  Nowhere does the 14th Amendment confer "natural born citizen" status. The words simply do not appear, but Mr. Schreiber would have us believe they are implied.  My argument needs no such implication for it does not seek to read into the Constitution that which was not put there by those who wrote the 14th Amendment which does NOT grant "natural born citizen" status.

More from Mr. Schreiber,

" While he may very well be right in arguing that Barack Obama is America’s first president born with dual citizenship, according to Lawrence Solum’s 2008 commentary, Originalism and the Natural Born Citizen Clause (reviewed here at America’s Right in early October), there is currently no clear understanding of our founders’ original intent with regard to the Natural Born Citizen clause."

Then this issue is certainly ripe for the SCOTUS to make such a determination and that is all I have ever tried to accomplish with this case.  As a citizen, I sought to bring this case before the Supreme Court so that there might be closure on this issue of first impression.  Since the country has been so divided on this issue, the highest court in the land needs to settle this once and for all.  Of course, I have a strong opinion, supported by law, facts and arguments, but ultimately the issue needs to be decided by the US Supreme Court.  It's up to them to make the tough calls.  The issue couldn't be more ripe for review.

More from Mr. Schreiber:

"Now, there may be a clean slate in terms of interpretation, of course, but it would nonetheless behoove Donofrio to provide even a smattering of support as it does run to the heart of his claim that the Secretary of State failed to honor her obligations with regard to balloting."

And here Mr. Schreiber, albeit a struggling law student and not a professional lawyer, fails to grasp the context of my suit.  My law suit was originally brought in order to force the Secretary of State to exercise her statutory and Constitutional duty to investigate which candidates are eligible to be President.  There is no dispute as to the issue of whether she did anything to "certify" which candidates are "by law entitled" (NJSA 19:13-22) to appear on the ballots, nor is there any evidence that she took any act to uphold her oath of office to support and protect the US Constitution.  She did nothing and it has been admitted by one of her key subordinates.  Indeed, that she did nothing was not even disputed by her counsel, the NJ Attorney General's Office, nor was this fact disputed by Judge Sabatino in his five page Appellate Division opinion.

My law suit was brought in the nature of a traditional "writ of mandamus" (aka "action in lieu of prerogative writs") in order to force the Secretary of State to do "something" to protect the integrity of the ballots as per her oath of office and as is required by NJSA 19:13-22, a statute specifically addressed to the Secretary of State with regards to ballot integrity.  

The fact that Roger Calero, born in Nicaragua, had his name listed on New Jersey ballots is proof positive that Secretary Wells did nothing to protect New Jersey voters from fraudulent and frivolous candidates and she was therefore guilty of misfeasance since other Secretaries of State did have Mr. Calero's name removed from their ballots in their states.

The NJ Secretary of State also admits she did nothing to determine whether McCain and Obama were eligible.  I asked the lower courts to take Judicial Notice of the many cases being run through US federal and state courts in a frenzy of confusion as to the issues surrounding candidate eligibility.  I wasn't asking for the court to determine the facts of those cases or the merits, I simply was using the existence of such cases to show that a genuine controversy was raging in America as evidence that the "natural born citizen" issue needed to be addressed by the Secretary of State as it is her job to police the integrity of New Jersey elections and if there was no clear determination as to who is eligible under Article 2, Section 1, then there was no possible way she could certify that these candidates were, in fact, "by law entitled" to have their names of New Jersey  ballots.

By way of evidence, which Mr. Schreiber chose to ignore, I made reference to and quoted the current US Foreign Affairs Manual which states:

7 FAM 1131.6-2 Eligibility for Presidency

a. It has never been determined definitively by a court whether a person who acquired U.S. citizenship by birth abroad to U.S. citizens is a natural born citizen within the meaning of Article II of the Constitution and, therefore, eligible for the Presidency.

b. Section 1, Article II, of the Constitution states, in relevant part that “No Person except a natural born Citizen...shall be eligible for the Office of President,"

c. The Constitution does not define "natural born".

The “Act to establish an Uniform Rule of Naturalization”, enacted March 26, 1790, (1 Stat.103,104) provided that, “...the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born ... out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States.”

d. This statute is no longer operative, however, and its formula is not included in modern nationality statutes. In any event, the fact that someone is a natural born citizen pursuant to a statute does not necessarily imply that he or she is such a citizen for Constitutional purposes.  (Emphasis added.)

This tells you straight up, directly from a Government publication, that the issue has never been definitively determined. And I point out here, as I did in my SCOTUS stay application, that the Foreign Affairs Manual fails to mention that Congress specifically repealed the "natural born" part of the 1790 Naturalization act in the Naturalization Act of 1795 leaving only the word "citizen" and repealing the words "natural born".  

Secretary Wells had a job to do and she didn't do it.  Not having done that job, and there being no issue of genuine fact to dispute, I asked for a stay of the NJ ballots to be put in place for the length of time it would take the Secretary to do her job and make a proper determination as to the eligibility of the candidates.  That was her job to do, not mine.  I raised the Constitutional issues because these issues were potential road blocks to either of the major candidates being sworn in post-election.  And there are, in fact, going to be post election challenges. 

I sought to make the Secretary do her job as the chief election official in NJ charged with securing the integrity of New Jersey's electoral process.  It's not my job to do her job, but rather it's my job as a citizen to use the law to command her to do her job, and that is exactly what the eloquent process of writ of mandamus was intended to do; to protect the public from Government officials who failed to do their job and fulfill their prescribed duties.

More from Mr. Schreiber:

"Secondly, United States law clearly provides now—as it did in August of 1961—that an individual born in the United States is both a 'natural born citizen' and 'subject to U.S. jurisdiction.' "

And where exactly does it say that such a person is a "natural born citizen" in the 14th Amendment?  It doesn't say that anywhere, and that's the main point of my case.  Had the US Legislature and the States that ratified the 14th Amendment sought to grant the status of "natural born citizen" by virtue of simply having been born on US soil, than that's what the 14th Amendment would say, but it does not say that.  Such an allegation is pure fiction.

Mr. Schreiber continues:

"If that child was born in the United States, the nationality of that child’s parents has no impact whatsoever on his status as a natural born citizen of the United States of America, dual citizenship be damned; this, of course, is at the heart of the debate over “anchor babies” and illegal immigration."

This is completely false.  The "anchor babies" issue deals with whether those children are "citizens", not whether they are "natural born citizens" eligible to hold the office of President of the United States.  They are not eligible since, at birth, they are also subject to the jurisdiction of the countries their parents were citizens of.

Mr Schreiber continues:

"Nevertheless, Donofrio suggests that it doesn’t matter what Obama’s birth certificate says because his father was a Kenyan national, but in fact it does. If Obama was born in Honolulu as he maintains (I’d still like to see a long-form birth certificate, of course), he is a natural born citizen."

Wrong.  The 14th Amendment does not use the words "natural born citizen", it uses the word "citizen". The Constitution uses the word "citizen" in the 14th Amendment, but the only place the Constitution discusses "natural born citizen" is in Article 2, Section 1, and ONLY as to that being an absolute qualifier for those seeking to hold the highest office in the land, President of the United States.  It makes sense that the framers would have required those seeking this office to have a totally pure and natural tie to this country unencumbered by dual nationalities at birth.

But despite whether Mr. Schreiber does or does not believe my evidence and legal arguments, it is specious for him to imply that I have provided no evidence to make my case.  I have provided many citations and various legislative history to make my case, and Mr. Schreiber has included none of it in his blog, but has, instead, chosen to hide the fact that such arguments and legal support have been provided by me to the various courts this case has been run through.  Any cursory review of the documents provided at this blog will prove Mr. Schreiber has grossly understated my case.  And in conclusion, I will point out once more that Mr. Schreiber didn't even provide a link to this blog.


Leo C. Donofrio