“Blast from the Past” — CDR Kerchner (Ret) Speaks on “natural born Citizen” with Radio Host Jim Richards

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jun. 10, 2023) — The afternoon of the day the White House published an image purported to represent the “long-form” birth certificate of Barack Hussein Obama II, CDR Charles F. Kerchner, Jr. (Ret) joined Canadian podcast host Jim Richards to make his case for why he believed Obama was ineligible to the presidency as a “natural born Citizen.”

The eight-minute interview can be heard here.

Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution has three requirements for the nation’s chief executive: that he be at least 35 years of age; that he have resided in the U.S. for at least 14 years; and that he be a “natural born Citizen.”

The term was not defined in any of the founding documents, nor has the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on point as to who and who does meet the qualification.

The requirement, Kerchner has asserted, was included to assure “sole allegiance” of the chief executive to the new nation created through the colonists’ unlikely victory over the powerful British army in a quest for freedom of religion, speech and assembly in what was a novel experiment in self-governance.

In the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the Framers wrote, in part:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

More than 12 years since his interview with Kerchner, Richards remains at iHeartRadio on NewsTalk 1010, where he hosts “The Showgram with Jim Richards.”

Recalling Saturday how he came to be Richards’s guest, Kerchner told The Post & Email, “His show producer contacted me and asked if I’d come on the air and discuss it. I don’t know how the show host and/or producer got my name.”

Kerchner was the sole guest in the segment, appearing without his attorney at the time, the late Mario Apuzzo of Jamesburg, NJ.

Beginning in 2008, both men wrote extensively about their interpretation of the “natural born Citizen” requirement which the Founders reserved solely for the president and commander-in-chief, although the Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, mandated it for the vice president as well.

Earlier this year, Kerchner published a compilation of his writings on the subject of “natural born Citizen,” and he continues to post frequently at his blog on that and other constitutional issues. Apuzzo’s blog remains online with what appears to be his last post dated February 8, 2021.

Apuzzo passed away in October that year after suffering an illness requiring hospitalization.

Kerchner’s interview began with Richards announcing the White House’s release that morning of the “long-form” image. At the same time, Richards opined that despite that move, “it wouldn’t be good enough” for those who doubted the authenticity of the “shorter form” birth certificate first published at The Daily KOS on June 12, 2008.

Richards was aware that Kerchner had been the lead plaintiff in the 2009 case Kerchner, et al v. Obama, et al challenging Obama’s constitutional eligibility to serve as president and Congress’s dereliction in failing to vet him. After Richards inquired of its status, Kerchner responded that while the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, “they refused to hear it.”

Richards then asked Kerchner why he did not believe the “short-form” birth certificate to be “accurate.” Kerchner responded on the question of the definition of “natural born Citizen,” one of two he said were raised in his lawsuit. Obama was ineligible, Kerchner maintained, because his father “was a foreign national, a British subject, not even an immigrant to the USA, so he can’t be a natural born Citizen because to be natural born, you have to be born of two U.S. citizens in the USA; that’s the Framers’ and Founders’ intent, and that was a legal issue in my question, and I wanted that to get clarified — all the Supreme Court cases up to that point had attested to what I just said, but it was never tested against the presidency…”

“As far as the original Certification of Live Birth online,” Kerchner continued, “Obama has produced or released a birth certificate to no one. All we see is digital images. We need to see documents in the hands of controlling legal authorities to be vetted by forensic analysis, not just internet images and statements that it’s true and correct and nobody can see a piece of paper. He has submitted no piece of paper to any secretary of state; no controlling legal authority has seen any of his vital records…”

Although Richards’s show introduction statement implied the date of the broadcast was the day after the long-form birth certificate release, Kerchner located emails memorializing that it took place the afternoon of April 27, the same day the PDF document was released by Obama.

“…by the time I was on that show, I was already aware of signs of forgery in the online PDF document image put out by the White House, i.e., the unusual layers that were seen immediately by graphics experts when they looked at the PDF document file online and they then had contacted me about that issue in the early afternoon of the 27th of April, 2011,” Kerchner wrote in a description beneath the video on his YouTube channel. “And thus at one point in the show you hear me bringing up that point, likely being one of the first to do so on a radio show. Of course the more people who subsequently looked at that PDF document the more signs of forgery were found in it.”

As The Post & Email has reported in depth, a criminal probe launched by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) in August 2011 into the origins of the “long-form” birth certificate image concluded that it did not represent a real, paper document but rather, a “computer-generated forgery,” confirmed by two reputable forensic analysts working independently and reaching their conclusions using different methods.

Kerchner pointed out to Richards that the number appearing on the long-form was higher than those of the Nordyke twins, whose births were recorded as August 5, 1961, the day after Obama’s, August 4, 1961, at the same hospital, the Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, thereby casting further doubt on the image’s authenticity. Thus, Obama’s number should have been lower, not higher.

Kapiolani, moreover, has never confirmed Obama’s birth there, citing “privacy” laws.

Misunderstanding Kerchner’s explanation of the constitutional requirement, Richards posed the question, “If it’s a hard-and-fast applied law that you have to have two natural-born Americans to be your parents, why wouldn’t that have been the stickling point and not about his birth certificate and not about where he was born?”

Kerchner has never argued that a presidential candidate’s parents also must have been born in the United States with automatic U.S. citizenship, but rather, that naturalized parents, provided the naturalization occurred prior to the child’s birth, would qualify their child as a “natural born Citizen” if he or she were born in the U.S.

Toward the end of the segment, which had become slightly more contentious, Kerchner posed to Richards, “This birth certificate, have you done layers-analysis of it yet?”

“No, I haven’t,” Richards responded.

“I suggest you have your digital experts take that image and look at the layers,” Kerchner replied. “It was made up of layers; it was not even a scanned-in original image.”

“Well, I will get my digital experts right on that,” Richards responded, perhaps sarcastically.

Switching his focus, Kerchner told Richards the Constitution “holds us together” and that “without that Constitution, the United States does not exist, will fall apart, will collapse like the Soviet Union.”

“Obama was born to a foreign national,” he continued. “You’ve got to be a legal natural born Citizen…The Founders and Framers wanted sole allegiance at birth in that office because he’s the commander of our vast military power…”

In a podcast Friday titled “R.I.P. USA,” former U.S. Secret Service agent in the Obama White House Dan Bongino opened with, “They’re looking to demoralize you. Are you defeated?…Do you consider yourself vanquished?”

“Folks, the police state isn’t coming; it’s not going to be here next week…or next month or next year…the police state’s here now, and you’re living in it,” Bongino continued. “…Do not be demoralized. They are trying to get you to feel defeated.”

“Folks, I could give you silly clichés all day, but that ‘darkest-right-before-dawn’ thing: it matters right now. We are at the — If we stop it we are at the end of a micro-cycle of police-state, communism stupidity, and we’re about to turn a corner, but not if you’re demoralized…”

Following a commercial, Bongino accused former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of “smiling as the legal guillotines drop,” undoubtedly a reference to the 37-count federal indictment issued Thursday of 45th president Donald J. Trump, who defeated Clinton in 2016.

Beginning early in 2011, Trump, who was not a declared presidential candidate, openly questioned Obama’s eligibility to the office of the presidency and demanded that Obama release his “long-form” birth certificate. For that, he was assigned the label, “leader of the ‘birthers‘” by The New York Times and ridiculed by most of the mainstream media.

In a press conference approximately two months before the 2016 election, in an abrupt about-face, Trump declared Obama to have been “born in the United States. Period,” after which major media gloated on his apparent admission that he had been wrong.

Bongino’s evidence of Clinton’s “smiling” was a tweet she issued earlier that day asking supporters to buy her “But Her Emails” hats, a reference to her having destroyed more than 30,000 emails while serving as Obama’s secretary of state, more than 100 of which contained classified information, for which she was not prosecuted since then-FBI Director James Comey determined that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

“They don’t care about looking like tyrants,” Bongino said of Clinton and current government operatives, his voice rising.

After citing a litany of actions taken against Trump by various government actors, including two impeachments and the “Boxes” matter culminating in Thursday’s criminal indictment, Bongino asked, likening them to “strikes” in a baseball game, “There’s already been a first strike…This is like, the 17th strike…What are you waiting for? Why is this happening right now? It’s happening because tyrannical communist scumbag liberal leftists, they’re ushering in the police state; every police state’s required useful idiots…the modern progressive is the most useful of idiots.”

“Our corrupt government is desperately hiding the biggest political scandal of our time: Joe Biden’s alleged $10 million bribe, two $5 million bribes — they are hiding this,” he continued. “And to hide it, they’re attacking Donald Trump…Dictators, fascists, communists and thugs who have political opponents…people who’ve been in charge or have directly ordered…the imprisonment and arrest of their political opponents…Joe Biden…it is literally unprecedented in the United States to lord over the arrest of your current political opponent in a presidential race, which is what he’s doing.”

Among other accusations, the Biden Justice Department has accused Trump of violating the Espionage Act through his handling of allegedly classified documents after departing the White House. Trump has refuted that the criminal statute applies given he was the president and was able to declassify documents at will.

“Folks, all roads lead to Obama here,” (8:15) Bongino continued his monologue. “I’ve been holding onto this for a long time. Folks, if you’re going to prosecute Donald Trump for a classified documents alleged scandal…I was on Obama’s detail. Obama had a guy in his circle, very close in his circle…this guy was caught multiple times bringing foreign nationals up to secure floors where there were documents all over the place, most likely classified. Everybody knows who this guy is. Espionage Act violations? Exposing classified documents to foreign nationals? We have no idea who these people are…are you sure you want to go down this road?”

“I am in no way suicidal,” Bongino then declared, turning to his producer, Joe, for confirmation.

“Interesting that Obama wants to go down this road about classified documents; someone should find that guy, be really weird; maybe put him on a polygraph,” he continued. “What about Hillary Clinton, by the way?…Sure we want to go down this road? I got a lot to talk about. Think I’m going to start naming names soon; we’ll see what happens…You want to go down this road? All roads lead to Obama. Who was in charge when the ‘collusion’ thing happened? Obama. Who was in charge when Joe Biden took an alleged $10 million bribe now, two $5 million bribes from Ukrainians? That’s right: Obama…Who was in charge when Joe Biden squirreled away documents and took them against the law — classified documents — and hid them in his private office and residence? That’s right: Obama.”

Updated, 7:52 a.m., and corrected to reflect that the Nordyke twins were born one day after Obama, not before.