Is Kennedy VP Pick a natural born Citizen?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Apr. 1, 2024) — Last Tuesday, Independent 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. declared he had chosen attorney and philanthropist Nicole Shanahan, 38, as his vice-presidential running-mate.

Both are former Democrats, with Kennedy in October changing his party affiliation to “Independent” in what he said was a “very painful” decision he found necessary to break through the “two-party system.”

Shanahan, a wealthy tech entrepreneur, patent attorney, Democrat donor, full-time philanthropist and emerging farmer, said during the announcement that the Democrat Party has “lost their way in their leadership” and cares excessively for “elitism and winning at all costs.”

A donor to such causes as “criminal justice reform,” “social justice,” “Reproductive Longevity & Equality,” environmental efforts, autism research, and cooking oil, Shanahan provided $4 million to a Kennedy-supporting Super PAC for a controversial advertisement aired during the February 11 Super Bowl invoking the campaign of his late uncle, John F. Kennedy for which Kennedy later apologized to family members who might have experienced “pain.”

“The ad was created and aired by the American Values Super PAC without any involvement or approval from my campaign,” Kennedy said in a statement. “FEC rules prohibit Super PACs from consulting with me or my staff. I love you all. God bless you.”

Last May, Shanahan donated $6,600 to Kennedy’s campaign.

Tuesday’s announcement was made in Oakland, CA, where both Shanahan and current Vice President Kamala Harris were born, though more than two decades apart.

During his introduction of Shanahan, RFK Jr. claimed a connection to Oakland through his father, the late Robert F. Kennedy, who served as U.S. attorney general during the JFK administration.

In 1964, RFK won a U.S. Senate seat from New York which he held until he was assassinated in Los Angeles during his 1968 presidential campaign.

According to RFK Jr. (at 4:58), in 1967 his father visited Oakland to discuss “poverty issues,” later to return as a presidential candidate and taking part in a “very rancorous meeting” with the NAACP and Black Panther Party. During the exchange, RFK Jr. said, his father’s companions, astronaut John Glenn and decathlon star Rafer Johnson, advised Kennedy to leave for perceived safety reasons.

Defying their recommendation, RFK Jr. said, his father remained, ultimately earning the support of those who had angrily received him. In fact, RFK Jr. said, members of the Black Panthers went as far as to provide security to his father while he remained in Oakland.

“We need to start coming back to each other as Americans again,” RFK Jr. said to applause after relating the story.

Further to his relationship to Oakland, he said, as an attorney he fought a set of three environmentally-based cases against Monsanto, one of which resulted in a settlement of $2.2 billion after his legal team requested $1 billion.

According to CBS News, the Oakland case resulted in “$2 billion in punitive damages after concluding that sustained exposure to Monsanto Co.’s popular Roundup weed killer led to their cancer diagnoses. The couple will receive an additional $55 million for pain and suffering and to cover medical expenses.”

The Monsanto cases were brought, RFK said, to “get the poisons out of our food and out of our farms and to restore our soils.”

“The [environmental] effort,” he continued, “has consumed a lot of my life,” causing him to seek a running-mate who shared his “passion” for “wholesome, healthy foods, chemical-free; for regenerative foods; for good soils, and I found exactly the right person.”

As a “technologist,” Shanahan has conducted AI-based inquiry into the effects of toxins in water, air, food and soil, RFK said.

Shanahan “worked at a law firm” in Beijing, China and studied in Singapore during her legal training. An attorney who worked in the field of patent law, during law school Shanahan founded ClearAccessIP, a “tech law firm that uses AI to analyze and manage patent portfolios for clients,” according to Forbes.

In 2020, Shanahan sold ClearAccessIP, which is now called IPwe.

According to her Wikipedia page, Shanahan’s first marriage was to Jeremy Kranz and lasted less than three years, ending in 2015. That relationship, though reported by the New York Post, is not mentioned in an interview with People last summer wherein Shanahan described how she met her second husband, Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Having reportedly met in 2014, the same year Shanahan graduated from Santa Clara University law school, “they began dating in 2015, with Brin showing up to her campus office for long walks,” People reported. “We fell in love at Stanford, wandering the campus and talking about quantum physics,” Shanahan reportedly told the outlet. “He showed me around the areas he’d frequent when he was there as a masters student — and where he created Google with Larry Page!”

She and Brin married in November 2018 and shortly thereafter had one child together, Echo, who was diagnosed with autism approximately two years later. Shanahan also became stepmother to Brin’s two children from his 2007 marriage to Anne Wojcicki, who went on to found 23andme.

According to Brin’s Wikipedia page, “In August 2013, it was announced that Brin and his wife were living separately after Brin had an extramarital affair with Google Glass‘s marketing director Amanda Rosenberg.^[33][34][35] In June 2015, Brin and Wojcicki finalized their divorce.^[36]“

Having experienced an “identity crisis” as the wife of a billionaire, People wrote, Shanahan “realized the truth about her union with Brin: ‘It wasn’t a right fit,’ she says. ‘I can only speak for myself obviously, but I think what happened was I looked inside the marriage and I couldn’t see myself.’”

In July 2022, The Wall Street Journal published a column reporting that “Elon Musk engaged in a brief affair last fall with the wife of Sergey Brin, prompting the Google co-founder to file for divorce earlier this year and ending the tech billionaires’ long friendship, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Shanahan and Brin reportedly separated in December 2021.

Following the WSJ article, People reported Shanahan’s denial of the report through Shanahan’s attorney, with Musk refuting it on “X,” then known as Twitter. In a statement, WSJ said it stood by its reporting based on its sourcing.

Brin’s request for a divorce was completed in May 2023. According to Business Insider in September:

Under the terms of their divorce, Shanahan and Brin are set to split legal and physical custody of their daughter, now 4. Issues including spousal support, lawyer fees, and the division of their assets were settled in confidential arbitration, as part of a stipulation in their prenuptial agreement, according to court documents. The pair also agreed to “non-guideline” child support, though the dollar amount was kept secret, the divorce filings showed. 

Shanahan, a lawyer and the founder of the nonprofit Bia-Echo Foundation, did not contest the divorce but did ask the court to award her spousal support, the court papers said. 

People familiar with the matter told the Journal that the divorce was sparked by allegations of an affair between Shanahan and Musk, who was friends with Brin for years. Musk once fondly recalled a time when Tesla was struggling during its formative years but Brin and Larry Page, the other Google cofounder, still decided to invest in the company.

Amid RFK’s Tuesday announcement, Forbes reported:

We estimated Brin’s net worth at $113.8 billion, making him the 10th wealthiest person in the world. Shanahan sought at least $1 billion from Brin during the divorce proceedings, the Wall Street Journal reported. However, the final terms of the divorce were settled in confidential arbitration. Brin has also donated $23 million to Shanahan’s Bia-Echo Foundation, months after filing for divorce. Forbes reported on Wednesday that she likely received at least $390 million in Alphabet shares from Brin after the divorce, and could potentially be the wealthiest vice presidential candidate since Nelson Rockefeller, who served as Gerald Ford’s vice president from 1974-1977.

In a July 5, 2022 article in Puck, writer Theodore Schleifer compared Shanahan to MacKenzie Scott, formerly the wife of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, writing:

The name Nicole Shanahan first appeared on my radar in early 2019, shortly after she married Google co-founder Sergey Brin, becoming part of one of the world’s ten biggest fortunes. Brin, in his first 40 years of life, had been a fairly modest philanthropist, or at least a quiet one, outside of writing big checks for Parkinson’s research. And despite building a proudly political culture at Google and personally aligning with the anti-Trump Resistance, even showing up at S.F.O. to protest Trump’s “Muslim ban,” Sergey had not shown much interest in participating in campaigns and politics. But over the last few years, I would regularly hear from fundraising sources to keep an eye on Nicole—that she was much more interested in innovative philanthropy and political mega-donordom than her husband, and that she might even push Sergey in more fascinating directions as they aged, uncorking $100 billion for the left.

…It goes without saying that the world of mega-donordom is heavily gendered: The wealthiest people in the world are almost all men, and philanthropy and politics, like all things, reflect the biases of the principals. How might the world be different if more of the nonprofit and political capital was held by women? Who knows, maybe Roe would still be law. And that’s why divorces do matter, because they shift the power centers. And I do believe Shanahan will be a power center going forward.

“I also wanted a vice president who shares my indignation about the participation of Big Tech in the surveillance and the information warfare against the American people,” Kennedy continued his endorsement of Shanahan. “Technology has been a lifelong passion for my future vice president…I also wanted a vice president who shares my indignation about the participation of Big Tech as a partner in the censorship and the surveillance and the information warfare that our government is currently waging against the American people.”

He said for years Shanahan has been using her skills to uncover such government abuses. He further described her as “battle-tested,” “able to withstand criticism,” and someone who recognizes the need for a secure national border.

He said he wanted someone with “a deep love for the United States of America.”

RFK further described Shanahan as “the daughter of immigrants” (13:25).

According to Shanahan in a recounting of her life story, her mother was a legal Chinese immigrant who “had only been in the United States for two years when I was born.”

In interviews Shanahan has provided to several outlets, she said her father was diagnosed with mental illness when she was nine years old and that both parents were often unemployed.

Her mother, who initially spoke no English, worked as a maid for “Mrs. Ames,” Shanahan told Puck, in order “to survive.”

Following Tuesday’s announcement, The San Francisco Standard reported that “Shanahan was born in the Sacramento area and grew up in Oakland. Her mom is an immigrant from Guangzhou, China, and her late father, a German and Irish American, struggled with substance abuse.”

The San Francisco Standard, however, incorrectly quoted Kennedy as having said Shanahan is the “daughter of an immigrant.”

With only two years of residency in the United States when she gave birth, Shanahan’s mother would not have been eligible to apply to become a U.S. citizen for three more years if she were single. She would also have been required to “read, write and speak basic English,” among other stipulations in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

However, she would have been eligible to begin the naturalization process if at the time of her application she had been married to a U.S. citizen for three years or more.

Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution requires the president and commander-in-chief to be a “natural born Citizen,” a term the Founders did not define. As The Post & Email has reported at length over the last 14 years, controversy persists over its exact meaning and consequently, who can and cannot serve as president.

Numerous constitutional scholars have argued that the Founders intended the “natural born Citizen” requirement to exclude anyone without the strongest allegiance in the form of not only birth within the new nation, but also parents who were already its citizens.

Another distinct camp purports that the term signifies only “born in the United States” without regard to the parents’ citizenship.

In 2015 former solicitors general Neal Katyal and Paul Clement went farther, claiming anyone born anywhere in the world to one U.S.-citizen parent qualifies, using U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who was born in Canada to a non-U.S.-citizen father and U.S.-citizen mother and the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), born in the Panama Canal Zone to two U.S.-citizen parents, as examples.

In 2007, questions arose about Barack Hussein Obama’s eligibility driven by rumors he was born overseas as well as Obama’s own claim to have had a father who was never a U.S. citizen.

In response, the mainstream media was quick to ridicule anyone raising the question and later censor any discussion; even “conservative” commentators and show hosts refused to accept calls or inquiries on the subject, which only intensified as the 2008 presidential election neared.

In 2020, “Big Tech” went as far as to restrict discussion over “presidential eligibility” and “birtherism” in a formal policy.

Politicos in a position to have researched the “natural born” requirement express it as simply indicating a “U.S. citizen.”

Over the last few presidential cycles, several candidates born overseas have challenged the “natural born” requirement, as it is understood to mean “born in the U.S.,” as unconstitutional.

On January 18, 2016, The New York Times opined in a headline, “It May Be Time to Resolve the Meaning of ‘Natural Born.’”

“The overarching problem is that the Supreme Court has never been forced to interpret the clunky clause, leaving persuasive legal interpretations that range from arguing that the entire debate is nonsensical to asserting that only those born to certified American parents on verifiable American soil can aspire to the White House,” the outlet wrote.

In Section 212 of his 1758 treatise, “The Law of Nations,” Swiss philosopher and jurist Emmerich de Vattel, confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court to have been a significant influence on the Founders, wrote:

§ 212. Citizens and natives.
The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.

Further as to citizenship, Vattel continued:

§ 213. Inhabitants.
The inhabitants, as distinguished from citizens, are foreigners, who are permitted to settle and stay in the country. Bound to the society by their residence, they are subject to the laws of the state while they reside in it; and they are obliged to defend it, because it grants them protection, though they do not participate in all the rights of citizens. They enjoy only the advantages which the law or custom gives them. The perpetual inhabitants are those who have received the right of perpetual residence. These are a kind of citizens of an inferior order, and are united to the society without participating in all its advantages. Their children follow the condition of their fathers; and, as the state has given to these the right of perpetual residence, their right passes to their posterity.

§ 214. Naturalization.¹
A nation, or the sovereign who represents it, may grant to a foreigner the quality of citizen, by admitting him into the body of the political society. This is called naturalization. There are some states in which the sovereign cannot grant to a foreigner all the rights of citizens, — for example, that of holding public offices — and where, consequently, he has the power of granting only an imperfect naturalization. It is here a regulation of the fundamental law, which limits the power of the prince. In other states, as in England and Poland, the prince cannot naturalize a single person, without the concurrence of the nation, represented by its deputies. Finally, there are states, as, for instance, England, where the single circumstance of being born in the country naturalizes the children of a foreigner.

§ 215. Children of citizens born in a foreign country.
It is asked whether the children born of citizens in a foreign country are citizens? The laws have decided this question in several countries, and their regulations must be followed.² By the law of nature alone, children follow the condition of their fathers, and enter into all their rights (§ 212); the place of birth produces no change in this particular, and cannot, of itself, furnish any reason for taking from a child what nature has given him; I say “of itself,” for, civil or political laws may, for particular reasons, ordain otherwise. But I suppose that the father has not entirely quitted his country in order to settle elsewhere. If he has fixed his abode in a foreign country, he is become a member of another society, at least as a perpetual inhabitant; and his children will be members of it also.

§ 216. Children born at sea.
As to children born at sea, if they are born in those parts of it that are possessed by their nation, they are born in the country: if it is on the open sea, there is no reason to make a distinction between them and those who are born in the country; for, naturally, it is our extraction, not the place of our birth, that gives us rights: and if the children are born in a vessel belonging to the nation, they may be reputed born in its territories; for, it is natural to consider the vessels of a nation as parts of its territory, especially when they sail upon a free sea, since the state retains its jurisdiction over those vessels. And as, according to the commonly received custom, this jurisdiction is preserved over the vessels, even in parts of the sea subject to a foreign dominion, all the children born in the vessels of a nation are considered as born in its territory. For the same reason, those born in a foreign vessel are reputed born in a foreign country, unless their birth took place in a port belonging to their own nation; for, the port is more particularly a part of the territory; and the mother, though at that moment on board a foreign vessel, is not on that account out of the country. I suppose that she and her husband have not quitted their native country to settle elsewhere.

§ 217. Children born in the armies of the state or in the house of its minister at a foreign court.
For the same reasons also, children born out of the country, in the armies of the state, or in the house of its minister at a foreign court, are reputed born in the country; for a citizen who is absent with his family, on the service of the state, but still dependent on it, and subject to its jurisdiction, cannot be considered as having quitted its territory.

On July 25, 1787, future first governor of New York and future first U.S. Supreme Court chief justice John Jay wrote a letter to George Washington, who was chairing the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, stating, in part:

Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government, and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the american army shall not be given to, nor devolved on, any but a natural born Citizen.

During research on the Convention last year, constitutional scholar Joseph DeMaio found that the “Committee on Postponed Matters” submitted a revised recommendation for the presidential citizenship requirement in Article II. “Whereas originally it had been proposed that the president need only be a ‘citizen’ subject to an age and residency requirement,” DeMaio wrote, “in its Second Report to the Convention, delivered on September 4, 1787 by Chairman Brearley, the ‘natural born Citizen’ (“nbC”) restriction and ‘citizen grandfather clause’ exception was recommended by the Committee for insertion into the final draft of the Constitution.”

In 1804, the ratification of the 12th Amendment imposed presidential constitutional requirements on all vice-presidential candidates.

In 1862, the future author of the 14th Amendment, Rep. John Bingham (R-OH), said on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives:

All from other lands, who by the terms of [congressional] laws and the compliance with their provisions become naturalized, our adopted citizens of the United States; all other persons born within the Republic, of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty, are natural born citizens…

Last May, Shanahan participated in a “love ceremony” with Jacob Strumwasser, vice president of Lightning Labs, a software company specializing in the movement of bitcoin. Both are surfers and incorporated a “water blessing” in the celebration.