The Associated Press Shows Pro-Obama Bias to The Post & Email, Inc.

AP LAWYER ASKS EDITOR:  “DO YOU STILL WANT TO IMPEACH OBAMA?”

by Sharon Rondeau

(May 23, 2011) — The Post & Email has spoken with someone working for the Associated Press whose title does not indicate that he is a lawyer but who nevertheless admitted to being one.  He was responding to an email which this writer had sent to Mr. Mark Niesse, Associated Press reporter in Honolulu, HI, on Saturday, May 21, 2011.

Our email to Niesse reads as follows:

Hello, Mr. Niesse, are you aware that your name has come up as a possible accomplice in forging the “long-form birth certificate” for Obama presented to the public on April 27, 2011?

http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2011/05/jerome-corsi-to-release-details-on-key.html

Do you have a response to this allegation?

Many experts have gone on the record stating that the “document” is a forgery.

Sharon Rondeau
Editor
The Post & Email, Inc.
www.thepostemail.com
editor@thepostemail.com

Niesse had forwarded our email to this person’s department and did not respond himself.  The lawyer with whom we spoke had stated in his voice mail that he “really wanted to talk to” this writer.  During the conversation, which lasted approximately 15 minutes, we asked him right away if he was wiling to make statements on the record, and he said, “No.”  He posited that we were accusing Niesse of something and had called him a “scumbag.”

We explained that we had seen the question elsewhere while doing research for our own report, and that rather, we were providing information to Niesse which involved his name and reputation.

The lawyer stated that he thought it was unusual that we had sent such an email to Niesse and that he perceived it as accusatory. We replied that we did not agree.  We stated that Niesse had first chosen to contact us last August, and that it was Niesse’s choice whether or not to respond to us, directly or indirectly.  My response to the attorney was, “If my name were associated with wrongdoing of any kind and I was not guilty of it, I would want to know so that I could come forward immediately, clear my name, and demand that the defamatory material be removed.”

We thought it strange last summer when Niesse asked us for names and email addresses of organizations and/or individuals who might have made inquiries about birth index data which might or might not have related to Obama’s birth record.  We knew of such individuals and groups but do not reveal such to third parties.

Some articles written by Niesse regarding the Hawaii Department of Health have disappeared.  However, a story stating that Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie had sought to have Obama’s birth record revealed remains.

The Post & Email has demonstrated where the Associated Press has published statements from the Hawaii Department of Health that are untrue.  Neither the AP nor the Hawaii Department of Health has issued a correction.

It is now obvious that the document purported to be Obama’s “birth certificate” by numerous sources, including the AP, which said that the Certification of Live Birth was “the only type of birth certificate the state issues,” was not a full birth record.

Last summer, Niesse contacted The Post & Email unsolicited for an article he was writing about the “Vexatious Requester” bill which was eventually passed by the Hawaii legislature, although not in its original form.  We did not grant Niesse an interview, but we did answer his question.  Niesse himself raised the subject of “Barack Obama’s birth certificate” and used our quote accurately in his article.  Links from our subsequent article referencing Niesse’s August 3, 2010 piece are now dead.

In this writer’s opinion, the most surprising thing about the attorney’s phone call is that he did not deny nor even focus on the allegation made against Mr. Niesse, but rather, attempted to dedicate the time to discrediting and denying any evidence that Obama might not be eligible to hold office.  He stated that Obama is eligible by virtue of the fact that he was born in Hawaii and that “it has been established that if you’re born here, you’re a citizen.”  When we began to explain that there is a difference between “natural born Citizen” and “Citizen” as evidenced by John Jay’s letter to George Washington prior to the ratification of the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution, he feigned, or expressed actual ignorance of, the difference between the two terms and said we were “parsing words.”

He stated that he did not understand the connection between a journalist and a possible forgery of Obama’s birth certificate.  We had not properly explained how that came about, so we stated that Dr. Jerome Corsi had completed an interview last week in which he had stated that “he has the initials” of a media person who participated in the forging of the image presented to the public as Obama’s birth certificate on April 27, 2011.

It is also reported today that Corsi stated on the Bob Grant radio show that he will be filing a criminal complaint against the White House for fraud.  Corsi told Grant that “criminal fraud was committed by the White House to keep Barack Obama in the White House.”

A similar interview on Bill Cunningham’s radio show has reportedly been scrubbed from Cunningham’s website.  Corsi also stated that WorldNetDaily will be suing Esquire magazine for its article last week which stated that his book, Where’s the Birth Certificate? was being removed from circulation.

In a previous report, The Post & Email stated:

Via a reporter for the Associated Press whose article was widely disseminated on the internet in early August but has now been removed from several websites, Janice Okubo stated that birth index data is available in one-year increments for a cost of $98.75 but that no one had sent payment to the Health Department for it.

The link under the word “article” now leads to the image released on April 27 by the White House rather than the article written by Niesse last August to which The Post & Email had linked at the time.

Further to the eligibility issue, we explained to the attorney that a question has arisen over what might have happened if Obama, or anyone, for that matter, left the country as a child and became a citizen of another country, perhaps without his knowledge or understanding.  The attorney’s response was, “If no other president has had to present a birth certificate, why does Obama?” to which we responded, “Other presidential candidates have voluntarily presented one.”  The attorney seemed to indicate that Obama was being discriminated against by having been asked to provide such documentation about himself.  Why this was germane to the matter of an online question posed about a reporter is unknown.

We also stated that there remains a question about someone becoming president whose father was not a citizen of the United States.  He replied that that had already been decided but did not say by whom.  The lawyer stated that the AP “accepted” what the White House had put out and which the state of Hawaii had authenticated.  When asked if anyone at the AP had received an actual paper copy of the document, he answered, “That would be almost the original.  No, we didn’t. You’d have to get that through an FOI.”

On the day the White House released the image publicly, the AP stated that “The certificate says Obama was born to an American mother and Kenyan father, in Hawaii, which makes him eligible to hold the office of president.”  But how did they make that determination?

It was The Post & Email’s understanding that reporters from some news agencies had stated that they received paper copies of the document on April 27.  We told the attorney that within 24 hours of its publications, three image/computer/internet experts had written formal reports for The Post & Email stating that the image was a forgery and posed the question, “Why would they do that if they didn’t really believe it?”

WorldNetDaily’s private investigator from Hawaii has declared that three different forgeries had been created by employees at the Hawaii Department of Health, and Corsi has stated that he will prove that the image released on the 27th is not authentic (during Alex Jones interview).

We added that the First Amendment requires that the media investigate and report to the actions of government to the citizens rather than simply accept what the government says to be true.

The AP lawyer stated that it has not been the AP’s experience nor that of any other major news company that there has been any cover-up of Obama’s past.  The Post & Email responded that we have performed investigations into the Selective Service Administration, the State Department, and the social security number Obama is using and have uncovered evidence of fraud  in all areas.  He did not seem surprised nor fazed, but rather, restated that the AP’s research had shown no such evidence of corruption.

It is this writer’s opinion that the AP attorney was attempting to  quietly intimidate, ridicule and demean rather than address the allegation, whether true or not, that had been raised regarding one of his company’s employees.  We informed him that if a false allegation of impropriety had been made against anyone at The Post & Email, we would have come out with a denial immediately and demanded that the record be corrected, as we have in the past.

At one point he asked, “Do you suspect that Obama is not qualified or believe it?”  My answer was, “I suspect it because of the abundance of evidence that he is not, but I need to see proof.”  To me, his question appeared very out-of-place in the conversation we were having.

It is my opinion that the lawyer’s interest lay in denying anything which could render Obama ineligible or guilty of a crime. His closing question was, “On one of your websites, you said that you wanted to impeach Obama.  Do you still feel that way?”

Our response was, “We do not have several websites; we have one.  I do not recall writing anything such as that; a citizen writer or anyone else might have written it, and the question is irrelevant to this conversation.”   We then ended the phone call.

My question is, “Why would he want to spend his time speaking with The Post & Email about it?”

The real issue is that the Obama “birth certificate” has been called a forgery by many, and someone claims to know who produced it.