Lawsuit to be filed in Hawaii against state officials

ANDY MARTIN SUES OVER ALLEGED VIOLATION OF HAWAII’S UIPA, OR “PUBLIC RECORDS” LAW

by Sharon Rondeau

(May 3, 2010) — Andy Martin holds a J.D., is a former Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, editor, former adjunct professor of law at City University of New York, and radio talk show host.  As the best-selling author of Obama:  The Man Behind the Mask, he filed a lawsuit in Hawaii in the fall of 2008 to force the release of Barack Hussein Obama’s birth certificate, claiming that it was an historical document which should be part of the public record.

When Mr. Martin was 23, he became manager of a television station in Indiana and the youngest person authorized by the Federal Communications Commission to do so.  His full biography can be found here.

His websites are here, here and here.

MRS. RONDEAU: Thank you for agreeing to this interview while you are taking care of business in Hawaii this weekend, Mr. Martin.  Your newsletter stated that you will be filing a lawsuit this week in Hawaii, and that is why you’re there now.  Is this a different lawsuit than the one you had filed before?

MR. MARTIN: Yes, it is.  In November 2008, I filed a Freedom of Information request.  In Hawaii, their “freedom of information” law is called UIPA (Uniform Information Practices Act), but let’s call it Freedom of Information, just to be simple.

I filed a Freedom of Information request, and it took them five months to answer.  Then they wanted $600, and one of my readers donated the money, and then they basically sent me junk, garbage.  It was all external contact, like if you had sent them an email, they gave me your email.  But they censored all of their internal communications.  So essentially, that’s why if you’ve read some of my releases, I say that it’s a cover-up of a cover-up.  They had to organize how they were going to cover up not responding.

So this lawsuit is not directed at the birth certificate.  I’m still pursuing that.  The judge ruled against me on that one; I’m appealing.  They’re trying to stall the appeal, and I’m fighting that, and that’s one of the reasons I came here.  There is going to be more than one legal proceeding filed next week.  I can’t tell you everything because there’s going to be more to come.  But we’re going to be litigating aggressively against the secretiveness here.

There’s a lot that they’re trying to do, and I think they’re trying to curry favor with Obama because they think he’ll give them his presidential library.  Now there’s more chance that I’m going to adopt children from Polynesia than there is that they’re going to leave his presidential library here.  It ain’t happening.

MRS. RONDEAU: Why do you say that?

MR. MARTIN: His ego is so big that he would never allow a place as small as Hawaii to be the site of his presidential library.  As I said in my column (if you don’t get my emails, you should sign up to get them), but with his ego, he’ll want to put it in the Mall…maybe move the George Washington Memorial and use the vacant space to build his presidential library.  He’s an egomaniac.  So that’s why they’re currying favor with this guy, and it’s sort-of gross, really.

I’m fighting it, but you have to understand something:  there are a lot of people out there who are challenging Obama and doing stuff and making claims, but I have stuck to Hawaii, birth certificate, and issues related to Hawaii:  Frank Marshall Davis, etc.  I focus on an area that I’ve specialized in, but I don’t claim to be knowledgeable in all areas.

MRS. RONDEAU: When did you first begin to ask questions about Obama’s birth certificate?

MR. MARTIN: In the spring of 2008.  I don’t remember the exact date, but I sent them a check and asked for a copy of the birth certificate, and they rejected it, of course.

MRS. RONDEAU: Were you surprised at that point?

MR. MARTIN: I think I was.  I didn’t realize that we were in a marathon litigation.

MRS. RONDEAU: If it had been any other presidential candidate or someone going through a primary, you would have expected that the state in which he presumably was born would have released that?

MR. MARTIN: Well, at the very least I would have expected that if they refused to release it, that he would have accommodated people who wanted to see it if there was any question.  In my opinion, it has nothing to do with where he was born; it has to do with concealing the circumstances of his birth.  What they are, I can’t really give you a definitive opinion because I would be speculating about the lack of contents of a document I’ve never seen.  I don’t know.  But I think he does know, and that’s why he doesn’t want us to see it.  So that’s what I think is happening.  Obama likes to play games with the truth, and he likes to play games with the public.  But he’s been his own worst enemy because all of this hullabaloo about the birth certificate has really undermined his credibility with his own base as well as with the American people.

MRS. RONDEAU: How many people are on your team?

MR. MARTIN: We keep that under wraps because we don’t want Obama to know all of our operational endeavors.  But here’s the thing:  we have more resources and we have more coming in.  The only thing we’re short of, frankly, is money.  We can’t really service all the things we’d like to pursue with a limited budget.  On the other hand, I am not a fundraising machine and I don’t go out banging the pots and pans for money.  We do ask for it, occasionally…but I’m the world’s worst fundraiser, simply because my focus is on the law and on looking for the facts.  I don’t have a daily donation list or something…I don’t do that.

What I suggest is to sign up for the emails because we put out a lot of information, and over the next week, there will be mountains of stuff coming out.  But obviously, you’re better off to read it first so you can digest it.

MRS. RONDEAU: I know you are a lawyer, and the last I heard, you were going to be running for the Senate in Illinois.  Is that still the case?

MR. MARTIN: I did, but I lost the primary.  I couldn’t be in Hawaii working on the Obama case if I were still running.

MRS. RONDEAU: During that time, were you still working on lawsuits and getting to the bottom of the birth certificate?

MR. MARTIN: I was, although not as actively, obviously.

MRS. RONDEAU: Then you now have more time to pursue it.

MR. MARTIN: Of course.

MRS. RONDEAU: Do you think the possibility of the presidential library being built in Hawaii is the only reason they’re doing this?

MR. MARTIN: Well, that’s a plausible reason; they’re currying favor.  But it’s not going anywhere.  In fact, one of the ironies is that as you travel around the city of Honolulu, you don’t see anything that says “Obama Birthplace” (laughs). Even though he was supposedly born in Honolulu, there’s no “Obama Birthplace!”

MRS. RONDEAU: Do you think he was born there?

MR. MARTIN: I do.

MRS. RONDEAU: Is there any evidence to support that?

MR. MARTIN: I believe there is a birth certificate.  I don’t doubt for a minute that they have a document, and the elaborate theories of his coming and going to Kenya — I don’t believe any of that.  That’s my experience.  Now what’s the basis of my belief?  Being here, seeing what happened, researching these people, knowing the world as it existed…it’s nonsense that they were flying around the world; it’s just nonsense.

MRS. RONDEAU: So you are very focused on the hidden birth certificate and the fact that he has spent a lot of money keeping it hidden, has he not?

MR. MARTIN: Well, I don’t think he has spent any money keeping it hidden, actually, because many of these lawsuits I predicted would not succeed.  They were filed in the wrong place; they made the wrong claims.  He spent a lot of time aggravating his adversaries and showing they weren’t very good lawyers, but how many of them have filed a lawsuit in Honolulu to get access to the Hawaii records?  None.  So if someone is filing in Montana and claim that they saw something on the internet that Obama was conceived of a space man and a mermaid and they want the state of Montana’s records, I’m not surprised that they’re going to lose.  That’s what I’ve avoided.

Now a judge ruled against me in Hawaii on this issue.  He made an issue of statutory interpretation.  I didn’t sue for the birth certificate in Montana or Missouri; I sued where the birth certificate is, in Hawaii.  This is why I said to people, “If you’ll support this activity, we’ll continue it, because this is where it has to be heard.”  And I think I’m right.

MRS. RONDEAU: When they ruled against you based on that statutory item that you mentioned, were they wrong?

MR. MARTIN: Absolutely.  This is why they’re hiding all of their correspondence:  they don’t want us to see the internal correspondence, because they were trying to fabricate a cover story to deny all of these UIPA requests.  That’s what they’re trying to cover up.

MRS. RONDEAU: So they’re trying to make it seem as if they never received the requests?

MR. MARTIN: No, they were conspiring among themselves to see what their cover story was going to be – Lingle and the others…”Now what’s our answer going to be, Bennett?”  And Bennett said, “Well, tell them such and such, or tell them thus and so.”  You see?  So those are the documents they’re trying to conceal by saying they’re “executive proceedings.”  But that’s a bunch of nonsense.

MRS. RONDEAU: What we have been told from people who have sent their own UIPA requests is that Attorney General Mark Bennett has said that he can’t vouch for anything that Dr. Fukino and the Health Department might have said.

MR. MARTIN: Exactly.  But what if they’re hiding correspondence which shows that they created that non-vouching cover story to defraud people, and that’s what I’m suing to reopen.

MRS. RONDEAU: They claim that they have no index data…that there’s nothing to release.

MR. MARTIN: It’s all lies, all lies.  Because Fukino has repeatedly said, “I have the original ribbon copy in my possession.  They’ve never denied that, and yet, they won’t produce it.  And they’re claiming, well, what does that statute mean?  “Tangible interest”…doesn’t an author writing about the President of the United States have an interest in seeing the basic documents?  It’s absurd!

MRS. RONDEAU: Have you run into anyone who remembers Obama as a small child or when he came back from Indonesia?

MR. MARTIN: Yes, I have.  I’ve talked to some people; they’re afraid to go on camera.  That was the basis of my interviews that led to the belief that Frank Davis was the father.  There are a lot of people who are really concerned about being on camera.  Even yesterday – I don’t know if you saw the report – but KITV has something on their website, and it gives a hint of where I’m heading.  A supporter showed up and wouldn’t give his name.  Why?  Because they’re afraid.

You’ll have to read what I write later this week.  The birth certificate may not be an issue in all of this.  There may be a shorter pathway to the truth.  The birth certificate is intrinsically valuable, but it’s not necessarily the dispositive thing.

I think he’s hurt himself by what he’s done.  He doesn’t think so; he thinks he’s benefited from it.  In one abstract sense, he might have, if indeed we find out at the end of the day that he wasn’t constitutionally eligible and he managed to usurp the authority of the government when he wasn’t entitled to it.  But at the end of the day, Obama is imploding and he’s self-destructing, and the reason is that truth is lacking.

Friday when I held my news conference, I pulled out my birth certificate, and I showed the little one that I carry in my wallet.  My point is, you look at it and you say, “I’ve got nothing to hide.”  I don’t have it handy, but the point is:  What is he hiding?  Ultimately, you don’t have to be a “birther,” and you certainly don’t have to be somebody who believes he was in Kenya to ask yourself the threshold question, “Why is there a refusal to release the 1961 typewritten document?”  I can’t give you an answer.  I can tell you that there’s something missing, but at the end of the day, I haven’t seen it, so I can’t tell you what is missing.  So when you get to the final analysis, his secrecy isn’t helping him.

MRS. RONDEAU: You’ve already written a book about him.

MR. MARTIN: Exactly, and I’m writing a second one.  So the point I’m making is, it’s corrupt here.  But it’s not enough to say it’s corrupt.  You have to follow the process and beat them in their own home court on their own home turf using their own home rules.  And that’s what I’ve done and am continuing to do.  Now, it’s a heck of a lot harder to do that than it is to file these exaggerated claims and say he’s not the Commander-in-Chief and blah, blah, blah, and he has to prove he’s the Commander-in-Chief.  He doesn’t have to prove anything.  He’s in the White House.

MRS. RONDEAU: Regarding the filings you’re dealing with now, from the news release I read, the impression I have is that you are suing all of them for failing to uphold their own UIPA law.  Is that correct?

MR. MARTIN: That’s correct.  What I’m asking the court to do is to tell them that there is no such thing as “executive privilege” for common or garden variety, day-to-day activity responding to public inquiries.  That’s their theory.

MRS. RONDEAU: And do you think you can convince the court to do that?

MR. MARTIN: I don’t know.

MRS. RONDEAU: In which court will it be filed?

MR. MARTIN: Circuit court in Honolulu.

MRS. RONDEAU: Is that the same court where your first suit was filed?

MR. MARTIN: Yes.

MRS. RONDEAU: And they ruled against you.  Do you have reason to believe that the ruling will be different in this second lawsuit?

MR. MARTIN: I only give it my best effort and I only present the law as I see it and the strongest case possible.  I don’t believe or disbelieve what they’re going to do.  I can’t stop them from doing stupid things; I can’t stop them from looking stupid; I can’t stop them from looking bad.  But there’s a body of law that’s accumulating that these people are not dealing honestly and honorably with issues involving Obama’s records.

MRS. RONDEAU: Do you feel he has lost credibility even with those on the left who elected him?

MR. MARTIN: They’re uneasy.  He’s lost some of his supporters, but they’re uneasy.  People are uneasy.  The guy a couple of weeks ago — I don’t know if you saw the story about the Mayor of Champaign, IL.  He was asking about the birth certificate and they made a big thing out of it.

MRS. RONDEAU: Yes, I did a story on it.

MR. MARTIN: Well, if the Mayor of Champaign, IL has doubts, it’s really saturated…

MRS. RONDEAU: And he was excoriated for coming out and expressing doubt about whether or not Obama is an American citizen.

MR. MARTIN: Yes.  What does he have to hide?

MRS. RONDEAU: There doesn’t seem to be any rational explanation for why someone would do this.  Maybe there’s something that none of us could imagine?

MR. MARTIN: There’s something that he doesn’t want the public to see, but again, I don’t know what it is.

MRS. RONDEAU: Do you think it’s something that would preclude him from being constitutionally eligible?

MR. MARTIN: Well, you’re asking me to speculate, but my answer is that at the very least, it’s embarrassing. But what’s embarrassing to Obama, we don’t know, because his psyche is so convoluted.

MRS. RONDEAU: In your research, have you come across hard evidence that during his childhood, he was psychologically abused?

MR. MARTIN: I don’t think it’s a question of research; it’s basic child psychology.  He came out of a disturbed family background.  Every possible thing that could have gone wrong in his life went wrong, except for his grandparents who stepped in.  So the bottom line is, yes, he had a very unsettled childhood, and that, I think, makes him the person that he is.

MRS. RONDEAU: When you think about the totality of all the parties involved who are hiding something, school records, kindergarten records that are supposedly lost, how do you think they were able to orchestrate this such that no information has gotten out?

MR. MARTIN: Insofar as the school records, federal secrecy laws prohibit release.

MRS. RONDEAU: Unless Obama himself asks for it…

MR. MARTIN: Right, authorizes it.  As far as the birth certificate, the simple answer is that he doesn’t want us to see it; he’s been playing games with it.  But I don’t think there’s a vast conspiracy, or, as Hillary Clinton once said, the “vast right-wing conspiracy.”  I think that in his case, unlike Bill Clinton’s case, some of the information is protected by federal law, but never in contemplation that these kinds of questions would be asked of the President.  And secondly, insofar as Hawaii is concerned, the judge wrote a pretextual opinion trying to cover up the truth, and we’re litigating it.

As I said, there’s been a tremendous amount of energy devoted to all this peripheral litigation around the country, but I think there might have been a different outcome if there had been hundreds of lawsuits filed in Honolulu to get the information.  I’m still the only guy.  People sit on their front porch and they bang their pots and pans, but at the end of the day, I’m alone.  So I’m doing my best, and I’ll continue to do my best, but I’m only one guy.  There’s a lot of complaining, but what is the basis to complain when ultimately, you haven’t done anything?

MRS. RONDEAU: What were you out doing today in Hawaii?

MR. MARTIN: I’m working on a number of stories that are going to start breaking next week about all the fraud attending to Obama’s birth certificate.  In my opinion, there’s still an awful lot about that document that never surfaced.   We don’t know.  What I do believe very steadfastly and sincerely is that he has hidden the birth certificate for cause; in other words, there is material there that he doesn’t want people to see, and he hasn’t announced it openly, or if he has, then they’re hiding it under claims of executive privilege if someone sent them a letter or something.  But at the end of the day, he doesn’t want the American public to see the 1961 document.

What it is in that document he doesn’t want us to see, I don’t know.  We’ll be writing at least one story about the document itself in the next week.  Most of this past week has been involved in field work and research, and we’re  passing around more material and reading and studying.  We’re correlating what has been written with the physical properties of whether they line up.  So eventually, we want to come to an understanding or, if you will, a catalog of all of the lies and all of the inconsistencies, because, as you know, to some people he has said that he born at Kapiolani.  I believe his sister has said he was born at Queens Medical Center.  Let’s see the document, and let’s resolve that.

MRS. RONDEAU: Why do you think there would be two or more different reports as to the hospital in which he was born?

MR. MARTIN: Obama is a master of disinformation.  He’s constantly lying, and sometimes his lies catch him in more lies.  He used to call this woman in Kenya “Granny,” even though she wasn’t his grandmother, and then for months, a long time — even the Chicago papers were bamboozled — and they kept referring to her as Obama’s grandmother, which she wasn’t.  She was a subsequent wife to the one who was the father of Barack Obama.

Now when I originally came to Honolulu two years ago to start digging in the field and talking to people, I  had a different take on all of this, that maybe Obama really wasn’t the biological father, that he was just a stand-in for Frank Marshall Davis.  Honestly, I have never seen anything that undermined that conclusion in my mind.

MRS. RONDEAU: So you still believe that Frank Marshall Davis is the father?

MR. MARTIN: I do.  I can be very candid with you and say that if I found something that contradicted it, I would report. it.   Many people who hated Obama two years ago were angry with me when I came up with the Frank Marshall Davis theory, because they said, “Well, if Frank Marshall Davis is the father, he’s not a Muslim,” and I said, “Apparently not.”  And they said, “Well, we don’t want that; we want him to be a Muslim.”  So I’m not invested in any particular fact or allegation about Obama.  I’m only invested in the search for truth.  I think that’s why, unlike some of my competitors or contemporaries, I have the staying power of credibility where they haven’t.  If I can’t document it, I’ll tell people that.  I’ll say, “Look, this is a theory.”

I don’t know if you’ve watched my movie; if you haven’t, go and look at the movie.  It’s on the internet.  It’s about 25 minutes long.  There’s a little menu of chapters on the right-hand column if you scroll down to the bottom.  It will help you visualize things…if I say to you “Obama birthplace” or “grandmother’s house,” you don’t have a mental image of that, because the mainstream media have never done anything.  Somebody whom we took around today to Punahou was speechless; it was a jaw-dropper.  He said, “This is Punahou?” like it’s Harvard.  It’s like the Harvard of Hawaii.  It’s huge!

MRS. RONDEAU: Do you believe that Obama went there?

MR. MARTIN: Absolutely; he graduated from Punahou.  That’s an objective fact, I think.  When you’re trying to put together a crime file, you have to start with what you do know that’s objectively the truth, and then you start looking at the lies.  As I say, he called this woman “Granny.”  Of course, that got him in the lie of her being the grandmother, and then, of course, she was “Dottie,” and she started spouting about how she knew all this about Obama, but she didn’t know anything.  But he was stuck with her babbling on about his being a Kenyan when she wasn’t the grandmother; she didn’t know anything about when he was born.  But one lie on his part led to a second lie which put his foot in the soup, and the Kenyan theory got pumped up by that.  By the way, you can see the movie at “Boycott Hawaii,” “Stop Obama Coalition”; there are three or four websites that have it.

MRS. RONDEAU: I did hear about your boycott of Hawaii.

MR. MARTIN: I’ll be writing about that more this week.

The point is, when you go back today, the Obama issues are somewhat of a cold case, so I’m doing the litigation, which is new, but insofar as going into the birth information and Davis, I’m treating it like a cold case, so we’re going back and looking at everything all over again.  We’re checking our facts all over again; we’re reading all this stuff all over again. We found new stuff that way.

MRS. RONDEAU: Really?

MR. MARTIN: Oh, you’ll be amazed.  Be sure to sign up so you get this stuff directly.  We have some very interesting stuff that we’re going to be putting up as well as an essay on who the “birthers” are… Right now I’m driving past where Obama did his beach photo-op…that was all staged; it was all a phony picture; he went to this beach, he doesn’t live anywhere near there, but he just set up his phony photo-op for the media.

MRS. RONDEAU: Do you think he spent a lot of time in Hawaii as a young person?

MR. MARTIN: Yes, I do.  I believe he spent from age 10-18 there, absolutely.  His first years were.  Look, if you want to believe that he was born in Kenya, I will defend to the death your right to believe that, but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen any credible evidence that I would put in front of a judge that he was born there.

MRS. RONDEAU: You mentioned UIPA law.  The Post & Email has done a lot of researching of the UIPA laws, and we’ve made quite a few requests.  In regard to your requests, how exactly did they obstruct giving you the information you requested?

MR. MARTIN: They just claimed executive privilege for everything. They gave nothing.

MRS. RONDEAU: We received a lot of answers that said,”We have no records responsive to your request,” which I suppose is the same thing as nothing.

MR. MARTIN: The difference is that a lot of people have gone in there, and they’ve asked for this “Soetoro” stuff and blah, blah, blah.  I’ve never done the Soetoro stuff because that’s nonsense.  The Soetoro name arose out of the second marriage; it was used by the stepfather as an accommodation; there’s no evidence of any adoption, etc.  I’m talking to someone who’s here today learning for the first time, and I said, “It cheapens the movement when you start bashing the guy for what people did when he was six years old.”  So I’ve always felt that it cheapens us – not me, because I’ve never done it; I won’t touch that kind of stuff – but she married again, and they moved to Indonesia, and the man did his best as a stepfather, as stepparenting is not easy, took him to the Catholic school and told the sisters what they wanted to hear so that the boy could be in school, and that’s the end of it.  Anybody that makes a big thing out of that, it seems to me, cheapens the movement.

I have no problem with bashing away on the birth certificate, because that’s a legitimate issue.  He had nothing to do with that, either.  But the point is, you have to focus on the substance.  That’s one of the things that I try to do.  I try to sharpen the arguments; you look at what’s good and what isn’t; you look at what’s important and what isn’t, and you focus.  That’s why ultimately, they don’t like me.

The only three people that Obama has ever denounced are Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and me, at least until recently, when he added a fourth name to the catechism:  Glenn Beck.  Now all of those guys have big national media profiles; I don’t.  Why am I different?  Why did I get trashed by Gibbs?

MRS. RONDEAU: When did that happen?

MR. MARTIN: During the presidential race.  Why is that?  Because I have tried to find the facts, and I’ve stuck to the truth, and that’s why they don’t like me.  If I were running around promoting bogus documents and bashing him for what his parents did to him when he was six years old, I would lose credibility, too.  But what I’ve said, and I want to see the evidence, I want to see the state records, and I’ve said now they are legitimate national archives, and hint, hint, you may see an argument like that in a lawsuit this week.  But nothing about Barry Soetoro…so when they answer people who file these UIPA things and say, “Send us what you have on Barry Soetoro and Barry whatever,” of course they said they had no records, because there weren’t any.  It was nonsense.  So what I have brought to the table is the integrity of wanting only the facts and only the truth and focusing on what I felt was real.  I don’t want to harass Obama; I don’t hate him; I disagree with him politically, of course; there’s no question about that.  But I don’t want to do it in a way that cheapens me.

MRS. RONDEAU: In the KITV article, I noticed that they quoted you as saying that Obama definitely is not a “natural born Citizen.”  If Frank Marshall Davis is the biological father, then that wouldn’t be correct, would it?

MR. MARTIN: I had said that if you accept that Barack Obama Sr. is the father, he is not natural born; if you accept my theory that Frank Marshall Davis is the father, then he is natural born.

MRS. RONDEAU: Thank you very much for giving us this time during your hectic schedule in Hawaii, and I hope to do a follow-up interview at some point after your legal actions have been filed.

———————-

Editor’s Note: Mr. Martin’s best-selling book, Obama:  The Man Behind the Mask, can be purchased at Orange State Press and Amazon.