Tax activist's ad challenges Obama's eligibility for office
The Tribune examines allegations about president-elect's 'natural born citizen' status
By Sara Olkon and James Janega | Tribune reporters
December 3, 2008
Barack Obama birth certificate
The Obama campaign provided this birth certificate, showing Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.
An anti-tax activist from upstate New York who is questioning whether President-elect Barack Obama is a "natural born citizen" eligible for the nation's top job said Tuesday that his non-profit group spent "tens of thousands of dollars" to get his message across in ads in the Chicago Tribune this week.
Robert L. Schulz, 69, chairman of We The People Foundation, took out ads Monday and Wednesday to raise questions about whether Obama's Hawaii certificate of live birth is authentic.
The ads echo accusations circulated online by some Obama opponents before the election. Cases challenging Obama's citizenship have been tossed out of courts in several states, and Hawaiian officials have vouched for the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate, which is locked in a state vault. The Obama campaign likewise has always dismissed the accusations.
Nevertheless, some critics remain dubious.
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Here are the allegations raised in Schulz's ad, and some relevant facts:
•The birth form released by Obama was "an unsigned, forged and thoroughly discredited" live birth form, Schulz says.
Last summer, Obama's campaign presented a digital copy of his certificate of live birth. After critics questioned its authenticity, staff at FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, said they had seen, held and examined the actual birth certificate.
•"Hawaiian officials will not confirm" that Obama was born in their state, Schulz says.
Initially, Hawaiian officials said that privacy laws prevented them from releasing a copy or confirming that Obama's copy was authentic. But in late October as questions persisted, Hawaii's health director and head of vital statistics reviewed Obama's birth certificate in the department's vault and vouched for its authenticity.
•Schulz says that legal affidavits state Obama was born in Kenya.
The affidavits that Schulz refers to are filings by the Obama critics themselves in the court cases challenging Obama's citizenship.
•Obama's paternal grandmother is recorded on tape saying she attended Obama's birth in Kenya, Schulz says.
The group's Web site posted what it says is a transcript of a long-distance phone conversation in Swahili and English from late October between a questioner in the United States and Sarah Hussein Obama, in her Kenyan home. The translator said he was one of two interpreters conducting the interview in a crowded hut during a celebration, over a speaker phone that dropped the call three times. A copy of the recording was not provided by Schulz.
• Schulz says that "U.S. law in effect in 1961 [the year of Obama's birth] denied citizenship to any child born in Kenya if the father was Kenyan and the mother was not yet 19 years of age."
If a child is born in the United States—as Hawaiian officials state that Obama was—that child is a U.S. citizen regardless of his or her parents' nationalities. If born to an American parent outside the U.S., the law at the time would require the U.S. citizen parent to be at least 19, which Obama's mother was not. The provisions of this law were subsequently loosened and made retroactive for government employees serving abroad and their families. It appears that this would not apply to Obama's mother. The matter would seem to be academic: Hawaiian officials vouch for Obama's birth certificate.
•Schulz says that in 1965, Obama's mother relinquished whatever Kenyan or U.S. citizenship she and Obama had by marrying an Indonesian and becoming a naturalized Indonesian citizen.
U.S. law lists the specific acts and formal procedures necessary to relinquish U.S. nationality. The statute requires the acts be performed voluntarily and with the intention of relinquishing one's nationality. In many instances, one must be 18 to renounce one's citizenship. Obama moved to Indonesia in 1968 and moved back to Hawaii while still in grade school. There is no indication that Obama renounced his U.S. citizenship.
Schulz supports his argument with a reproduced Indonesian school document that states Obama's citizenship at that time as "Indonesian." But the same document also lists Obama's birthplace as " Honolulu, Hawaii."
Schulz, interviewed by the Tribune on Tuesday, said his concern about Obama's citizenship is not partisan.
"We never get involved in politics," he said of We The People. "We avoid it like the plague."
Tax debate is fair game, however. The Queensbury, N.Y., man has been active on tax issues for nearly 30 years. Last year, a senior judge in the Northern District of New York ordered Schulz to shut down a Web site that sold advice on avoiding taxes.
Asked about the case, Schulz said the government has tried to silence him.
He hopes the Tribune ads bring his group prominence.
Schulz said his group also considered a similar ad in USA Today, but said the cost was prohibitive. He said his group considered both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Tribune, but said his group settled on the Tribune because of the size of its pages and its larger circulation. He would not specify how much his group spent on two days of full-page ads except to say they cost tens of thousands of dollars and were paid for by donations from supporters.
A Tribune advertising spokesman said the newspaper has standards for what ads it will accept and that the ad met those standards.
