BUT HOW MANY HAVE ACTUALLY SIGNED?
by Sharon Rondeau
(Jan. 27, 2017) — As of 8:32 AM EST on Friday morning, a petition asking Congress and the administration to grant a pardon to former US Army flight surgeon Terry Lakin is registering 128 signatures.
As in the reported cases of two other petitions, the Lakin petition appears to have delayed posting signatures based on the numbers of people reporting to have signed them.
Some readers of The Post & Email have reported having signed the Lakin petition three, four, or five times as a result of having failed to receive a confirmation link after their first attempt(s). Lakin spokesman Marco Ciavolino made reference to a detected technical problem with the White House website and the petitions specifically in an interview with Peter Boyles on Monday.
Petitions posted at whitehouse.gov must register 150 signatures in order to be moved to the “public” area of the site.
The Post & Email will have an update on the Lakin case, revived since Donald Trump took office last Friday, later today.
Lakin was concerned that without having shown any verifiable documentation of his birthplace or citizenship, Obama was giving orders as commander-in-chief illegally. To the point where Lakin decided to “invite his own court-martial” that year, he had sought verification of Obama’s eligibility through his congressional representatives, his military chain of command, and even Obama himself. No one responded with any meaningful information or documentation.
Obama claims a birth in Honolulu, HI on August 4, 1961, but two images — a “short-form” Certification of Life Birth posted in June 2008 and a “long-form” Certificate of Life Birth posted at whitehouse.gov in April 2011 — have been deemed forgeries by experts and the latter by a five-year criminal investigation.
The White House posted the long-form image while Lakin was completing his six-month sentence in Fort Leavenworth and had been stripped of all pay and benefits.
In December 2010, Lakin was the subject of a court-martial conviction as a result of his questioning Barack Hussein Obama’s constitutional eligibility to serve. He was allowed to present no evidence in his defense nor to obtain any documentation Obama might have on file at the Hawaii Department of Health. Notably, military judge Col. Denise Lind said during a hearing in the case that procuring Obama’s birth certificate could prove “embarrassing” to Obama.
Lakin was sentenced to six months at Ft. Leavenworth and a dishonorable discharge from the Army. Ciavolino later published Lakin’s book, Officer’s Oath, an autobiography encompassing Lakin’s decision to forfeit his Army career if necessary to discover the truth about Obama’s origins.
In its stalwart protection of Obama, the media failed to investigate Lakin’s concerns, instead characterizing him as a “birther.”
Both Ciavolino and Gary Wilmott, the Lakin petition’s originator, have stated that Lakin wishes to re-enter Army to practice medicine, although he is now in private practice in Colorado.
Whether or not Trump is aware of Lakin’s story is unclear, although Trump began his own campaign to coax the White House to release Obama’s detailed birth certificate shortly after Lakin was sent to Fort Leavenworth.
In an interview with Sean Hannity broadcast on Thursday evening, Trump indicated that he is currently reviewing a pardon request for Christian Saucier, a Navy sailor convicted of mishandling classified information after he took several photos with his cell phone of the submarine on which he was stationed.
Trump said that he is also reviewing “several” other pardon requests.
Both Ciavolino and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, who commissioned the criminal investigation into the long-form birth certificate, have called for a congressional investigation into the forgeries.
I believe I was the first to sign.