Is the Lakin Petition Signature Count Accurate?

SIGNATURES REGISTERING, BUT SLOWLY

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jan. 24, 2017) — A petition asking that former Lt. Col. and Dr. Terrence Lakin be reinstated in the Army following his 2011 dishonorable discharge for having questioned Barack Hussein Obama’s eligibility shows 24 signatures as of 7:29 p.m. EST on Tuesday.

Launched on Saturday, dozens have reported signing or attempting to sign without having received the necessary confirmation link.

Based on solely the number of comments submitted in response to subject articles here, the number of signatories should theoretically be much higher.  On Sunday evening, The Post & Email’s readership skyrocketed in response to its publication of an interview with the petition’s author, Gary Wilmott, which was widely circulated on Facebook and through email by supporters.

The petition does not yet appear to have the requisite 150 signatures to be placed in a visible place on the White House website, although a petition which could not have been launched before Saturday, when Wilmott launched his, has been moved to the main page.

To receive a response from the administration, a whitehouse.gov petition must garner 100,000 signatures within a 30-day period.  Some of the visible petitions were likely begun before Donald Trump took office on Friday at noon.

On Monday, The Post & Email attempted to reach the new administration to see if technical problems might have played a part in the petition counter, which remained stuck at “1” for more than two days despite numerous readers having said they added their signatures.

In 2010, after having received no response from his chain of command or members of Congress, Lakin informed his military command that he could not deploy to Afghanistan for a second tour because he was unsure that the then-commander-in-chief was constitutionally eligible to serve.

News reports and Obama’s own biography written long before Obama sought the presidency had said that he was born in Kenya or Indonesia, alternately.   The biography, published in 1991, stated that he was “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii” and remained unchanged until April 2007, two months after he announced his presidential aspirations.

Articles by the AP and NPR said that he was born in Kenya, with some similarly altered after Obama became a presidential candidate.

The U.S. Constitution requires that the president and commander-in-chief be a “natural born Citizen,” which is commonly understood to mean “born in the United States” but could mean much more.  Obama claims a birth in Honolulu, HI to a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya who never became a U.S. citizen and was a polygamist.

In December 2010, Lakin was court-martialed and pleaded guilty to “missing movement,” was sentenced to six months in Ft. Leavenworth and the forfeiture of all pay and benefits, and dishonorably discharged from the Army.

As he completed his sentence, the White House released what it said was a scan of Obama’s long-form birth certificate from Hawaii, although several experts immediately deemed it a forgery.

The military refused to contemplate that Obama might not be eligible to serve, calling the reports of forgery “absurdities from the web.”

However, a now-five-year criminal investigation into the authenticity of the image concluded last month by revealing that two unrelated forensics analysts reached the same conclusion as Maricopa County Cold Case Posse investigators had on March 1, 2012, when they provided details of the probe to that point revealing that the image was likely a “computer-generated forgery.”

Also found to be fraudulent by the Maricopa County Cold Case Posse was Obama’s Selective Service registration form.

After his release in May 2012, Lakin opened a private practice in his home state of Colorado, where he continues to see patients.

Just after Lakin’s court-martial, the current president, Donald Trump, also questioned why the White House had not released Obama’s detailed birth certificate and claimed credit for the appearance of the image on whitehouse.gov on April 27, 2011.

At a press conference at the National Press Club in May 2014, Trump, who had not declared any presidential intentions at the time, opined that in regard to Obama’s background, he believed that Obama had either fabricated a birth in Kenya in order to obtain funding meant for foreign students attending U.S. colleges or that Obama actually was born in Kenya and not Hawaii, as he claimed.

Trump said that while he did not care about Obama’s grades, he wanted to see his college application forms along with his passport applications.

The White House did not release those documents, even after Trump offered Obama $50 million to be donated to a charity or charities of Obama’s choosing.

Maricopa County lead investigator Mike Zullo has said for several years that the long-form birth certificate image was posted “with the intent to deceive” and that there is no evidence that Obama was ever in the state of Hawaii until at least the age of five.

Since 2007, the media has worked assiduously to assure the American public that Obama was “born in the United States” despite the contradictory evidence and conclusions of forgery on the part of investigators.

The petition can be signed here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/reinstate-lt-col-terry-lakin-us-army-full-rank-pay-benefits-and-pension-immediately

Wilmott maintains that it was “simply unconsionable” for Obama to have allowed Lakin, a decorated Army flight surgeon, to have gone to prison rather than to have released his birth certificate to quell Lakin’s doubts.

The revelation that the image ultimately released by the White House is a forgery could explain why Obama did not acquiesce to Lakin’s many requests to see his documentation.