“Eligibility” Censorship on Full Display at YouTube

by Sharon Rondeau

(Aug. 16, 2024) — On or about August 4, 2024, Zach DeGregorio, host of the program, “Wolves and Finance,” uploaded a video to his YouTube channel titled, “Who is Kamala Harris?” which, among other things, questioned whether Harris is a “natural born Citizen” as required by the U.S. Constitution for the president and commander-in-chief.

Harris became the presumptive 2024 Democrat presidential nominee almost immediately after Joe Biden on July 21 withdrew from the race and endorsed her. To that point, according to NBC News, Harris was the least popular person to hold the office since its polling began.

In March 2021, as illegal migration across the southern border rose considerably, Biden appointed Harris “to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.” On July 29 that year, the White House provided an update on its “Root Causes Strategy,” stating of Harris, “She has worked with bilateral, multilateral, and private sector partners, as well as civil society leaders, to help people from the region find hope at home. This complements work done throughout the U.S. government over the last six months to learn lessons from prior efforts and to consult with a wide range of stakeholders to inform the development of this strategy.”

The initiative did not include a provision to immediately stem the unprecedented flow of illegal aliens which began shortly before Donald Trump left office and continued its increase over the Biden regime.

On Wednesday, YouTube informed DeGregorio it removed his video on the grounds it allegedly distributed “misinformation” for questioning Harris’s eligibility. YouTube additionally placed a “warning” on his channel, DeGregorio told us in an email Wednesday, and informed him that another violation over the next 90 days would generate a “strike.”

“I was taken completely by surprise,” DeGregorio, an accountant by trade and rising political commentator, told us. “This is a legitimate legal question that people should be allowed to discuss.”

Harris’s eligibility was in fact questioned as early as 2017, when rumors swirled of her plans to run for president in 2020. Those rumors materialized when she announced her intention in early 2019 to seek the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination.

In January, this writer was DeGregorio’s guest in a wide-ranging interview, one of which was the presidential eligibility issue and the April 2011 release of Barack Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate. At that time, DeGregorio’s YouTube audience was approximately 140,000.

The censored video is now available on Rumble.

What is a “natural born Citizen?”

As readers of this publication are aware, controversy has built in recent years over the exact meaning of the Article II, Section 1, clause 5 presidential “natural born Citizen” requirement, at least in part stemming from the candidacies of Obama (D), Sen. Ted Cruz (R), Sen. Marco Rubio (R), former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D at the time), former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), among others.

Some scholars define “natural born Citizen” as “born in the United States to parents who were themselves U.S. citizens, whether by birth or naturalization.”

Another interpretation is that the citizenship of the parents, and particularly the father, determines “natural born” status rather than the birthplace of the child. In May 2011, the late constitutional attorney Herbert Titus posted a YouTube video series in which he discussed the “natural born Citizen” question and advocated that view. The videos no longer appear on YouTube.

In Part 1 of the series, Titus said:

The question of Obama’s birth, where he was born, is an important question.  But the more important question is whether or not he is a ‘natural born Citizen’ because he was born in Hawaii. The conventional wisdom is that if he could produce a birth certificate showing that he was born in Hawaii, that would make him a ‘natural born Citizen.’  That’s not true; that only makes him a citizen by birth, and there’s a distinction between the two terms…

…What is a ‘natural born Citizen?’ Another way of putting it is there is a law of the nature of citizenship. If you’re a natural born Citizen, you’re a citizen according to the law of nature, not according to any positive statement in a constitution or in a statute, but because of the very nature of your birth and the very nature of nations and your relationship to the nation as a citizen…If you want to find out whether someone’s a natural born citizen, go back and look at what the law of nature would be or would require in order to be a citizen by birth, and that’s precisely what a natural born citizen is [is] one who is born to a father and a mother, each of whom is a citizen of the United States…

As Titus noted, a more modern view of the term, perhaps conflated with a misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment, contends that anyone born in the U.S. is a “natural born Citizen,” regardless of parental citizenship or even the parents’ legal status at the time.

Yet another argument is that a “citizen at birth” or “by birth,” whether occurring in the U.S. or elsewhere, to one U.S.-citizen parent is sufficient to confer “natural born” status on the child since naturalization was not required.

What Did the Founders Say?

Historical records indicate that after a bloody and costly Revolutionary War in which a ragtag colonial army led by General George Washington defeated the forces of King George III, the Framers of the Constitution wished to preclude “foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils” (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 68).

In a July 25, 1787 letter to Washington, who was presiding over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, future New York Governor and first U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay wrote:

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.

Is Harris Eligible?

Kamala Harris was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, CA to parents who had arrived in the United States several years before on respective student visas. Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, came from India, and her father, Donald Jasper Harris, hailed from Jamaica. Both sought and acquired advanced degrees from the University of California, Berkeley in the fields of science and economics, respectively.

According to Biography.com:

The daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father who moved to the United States to pursue their educational dreams, Kamala Harris’ story is the story of an increasingly multicultural America. Her trailblazing career, which saw her become the first woman, the first Black and the first South Asian America elected vice president, has its roots in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s, and the family, friendships and communities that helped shape Harris’ life.

Additionally, the entry reports, “Harris spent several formative years in Canada” from age 12 to graduation from Westmount High School in Montréal. Notably, Harris’s biography at the website of the California attorney general, where she served from January 3, 2011 to January 3, 2017, states only that she “attended public schools” and arguably implies she received her entire elementary and secondary education in the United States.

In August 2020, just after Biden named Harris as his running-mate, then-Chapman University Professor of Law and Trump advocate John C. Eastman wrote in a highly-criticized Newsweek column that proper interpretation of Article II, Section 1, clause 5 and the 14th Amendment cast doubt on Harris’s vice-presidential eligibility as well as her basic U.S. citizenship, respectively.

“The language of Article II is that one must be a natural-born citizen,” Eastman wrote. “The original Constitution did not define citizenship, but the 14th Amendment does—and it provides that ‘all persons born…in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.’ Those who claim that birth alone is sufficient overlook the second phrase. The person must also be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and that meant subject to the complete jurisdiction, not merely a partial jurisdiction such as that which applies to anyone temporarily sojourning in the United States (whether lawfully or unlawfully). Such was the view of those who authored the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause; of the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1872 Slaughter-House Cases and the 1884 case of Elk v. Wilkins; of Thomas Cooley, the leading constitutional treatise writer of the day; and of the State Department, which, in the 1880s, issued directives to U.S. embassies to that effect…the Supreme Court has never held that anyone born on U.S. soil, no matter the circumstances of the parents, is automatically a U.S. citizen.”

As Eastman observed, the 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, imposed the Article II presidential requirements on all vice-presidential candidates.

On August 9, constitutional scholar Joseph DeMaio, who has expounded on the “natural born Citizen” issue for more than 14 years, revealed a new discovery reinforcing his belief that “John Jay – the Founder whose July 25, 1787 ‘hint’ letter to George Washington resulted in the insertion of the nbC eligibility restriction into Art. 2, § 1, Cl. 5 of the Constitution – cited and relied consistently on de Vattel and The Law of Nations in forming his legal conclusions and articulating his principles of law.”

Applying only to the president, the term was agreed upon, DeMaio found, by attendees of the Constitutional Convention, apparently without debate, after the Committee on Postponed Matters inserted it into Article II, Section 1, amending the initial requirement of simply “citizen.”

In addressing the question of presidential eligibility, DeMaio and other constitutional scholars have cited Swiss jurist, legal scholar and philosopher Emmerich de Vattel’s 1758 work, “The Law of Nations” as having set forth the standards for citizenship and the “natural born” condition relied upon by the Framers.

In the applicable sections of his lengthy tome, Vattel said:

§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.

§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.

In 2011, the late Atty. Mario Apuzzo wrote:

Emer de Vattel gave us a time-honored definition of a “natural born Citizen” which the Founders and Framers used when drafting the Constitution. That definition is a child “born in the country, of parents who are citizens.” Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, Section 212-231 (London 1797) (1st ed. Neuchatel 1758). Accepting natural law and the law of nations of which Vattel wrote and reported, the Founders and Framers gave the critical task of being President and Commander in Chief only to future “natural born Citizens.” These were to be the children born in the United States to parents who were born or naturalized Citizens of the United States.

In 1977 and again in 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court, which has not issued an opinion on point as to the definition of “natural born Citizen,” acknowledged Vattel’s influence on the Framers. In the latter case, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas described Vattel as “the founding era’s foremost expert on the law of nations.”

The Four Issues…and a Bonus

I. Family Relationships

Following the introduction of his topic, DeGregorio pledged to “answer the question” he posed in the video’s title. “When I’m investigating someone, I’m not just gathering dates and facts and a résumé of accomplishments,” he said. “What I really want to know is, ‘What kind of person is this?'” (00:53)

He identified “four stories about Kamala Harris that you’ve probably never heard but that everyone should know.”

The first, DeGregorio said, was Harris’s “estrangement” from her father, Donald Jasper Harris, now 85, prompted by her comments about “Jamaicans” during a February 2019 interview with Charlemagne Tha God, host of “The Breakfast Club.”

Harris declared herself a 2020 presidential candidate one month before the interview, DeGregorio observed.

In her conversation with Charlemagne about “weed” and whether she supported “legalizing it,” Harris laughingly responded with, “Half my family’s from Jamaica; are you kidding me?” Interspersed with more laughter with the host, Harris admitted to having “smoked” and “inhaled” the drug. “It was a long time ago…I just broke loose,” she added mirthfully.

“Do you remember the high?” Charlamagne asked, to which Harris responded, again laughing, “I do…Listen, I think that it gives a lot of people joy, and we need more joy in the world…” followed by more laughter.

In December that year, Harris withdrew from the race due to what she said was a lack of financial support. The first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses would take place the following month.

After obtaining his PhD in economics from the UC Berkeley, Donald Harris held several professorships, eventually becoming a tenured professor of economics at Stanford University. Subsequently he served as an adviser to the Jamaican government, and in 2021 he was awarded the “Order of Merit,” Jamaica’s third-highest honor, “for his outstanding contributions to national development.”

DeGregorio related Donald Harris’s response to his daughter’s characterization of Jamaicans to a “local newspaper” in which he strongly denounced her “fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics.”

The statement invoked the elder Harris’s “dear departed grandmothers” and “deceased parents” who “must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity” connected to Harris’s characterization, whether made “jokingly or not.”

The article containing his comments originally appearing in Jamaica Global Online is no longer available.

“So imagine this: your daughter is running for president of the United States,” DeGregorio said. “She makes a bad joke on the radio, and you publicly disavow her. It’s just a little weird. They must have a horrible relationship.”

In conclusion, he suggested Harris “pick up the phone and call her dad.”

As The Post & Email has reported, Donald Harris became a U.S. citizen in September 1981. Just days before Kamala’s interview with Charlamagne, Donald Harris published at Jamaica Global Online a memoir, “Reflections of a Jamaican Father,” detailing his childhood on the island and the influence it might have had on his two daughters, both of whom were born in the United States. The memoir begins:

As a child growing up in Jamaica, I often heard it said, by my parents and family friends: “memba whe yu cum fram”. To this day, I continue to retain the deep social awareness and strong sense of identity which that grassroots Jamaican philosophy fed in me.  As a father, I naturally sought to develop the same sensibility in my two daughters.  Born and bred in America, Kamala was the first in line to have it planted.  Maya came two years later and had the advantage of an older sibling as mentor.  It is for them to say truthfully now, not me, what if anything of value they carried from that early experience into adulthood.  My one big regret is that they did not come to know very well the two most influential women in my life: “Miss Chrishy” and “Miss Iris” (as everybody called them).  This is, in many ways, a story about these women and the heritage they gave us.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported:

Since Kamala Harris’s rise to national prominence, her father has been labeled a left-wing economist who often focused on abstract debates primarily of interest to fellow academics. The 85-year-old former Stanford University professor did spend much of his career immersed in arcane disputes over topics whose practical implications can be hard to discern immediately. His 1978 book, for instance, is a 313-page dissection of centuries of competing concepts about the nature of capital accumulation and income distribution, suggesting a fascination with economic theory purely for its own sake. But his role in trying to solve the practical economic problems of Jamaica — the country of his birth and youth — reveals a less-examined side of his career.

And some former colleagues say that work provides insight into the economist’s potential influence on his daughter’s worldview. They hear echoes of Donald Harris in elements of the vice president’s speeches — from her commitment to minority-owned businesses to her support for the Biden administration’s industrial policy initiatives.

II. Attorney General

The second circumstance DeGregorio highlighted focused on Harris’s prosecution, as California attorney general, of two undercover journalists from the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who video-recorded conversations between Planned Parenthood officials and representatives of companies allegedly seeking to illegally acquire body parts from aborted children.

In November 2019, Daleiden, Merritt, CMP and several other entities were convicted of “conspiracy to commit fraud, breach of contract and trespass and violation of state and federal recording laws in Maryland, California and Florida,” according to National Review, and were ordered to pay $2.4 million in penalties and attorneys’ fees to Planned Parenthood.

An appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022 was unsuccessful.

The U.S. Supreme Court did not grant Daleiden’s appeal a hearing, DeGregorio reported.

Harris’s successor in the attorney general’s office, Xavier Becerra, continued to prosecute CMP on additional charges.

On August 8, the New York Post revealed previously unreleased videos from Daleiden in which Planned Parenthood physicians had discussed dismembering fetuses during removal from the mother so as to avoid violating the federal ban on partial-birth abortion.

III. County Prosecutor

During her time as an assistant district attorney in Alameda County, DeGregorio recounted, Harris prosecuted Kevin Cooper for the murder of four people under questionable circumstances for which he received the death penalty. Though Harris could have had Cooper’s DNA tested, she argued against it “to protect the corrupt police officers” who allegedly destroyed evidence pointing to another perpetrator, DeGregorio said.

“Recently, after Kamala Harris started receiving criticism for this case, she has reversed her opinion,” he continued. “She told a reporter, ‘I feel awful about this,’ not that she admits to doing anything wrong, but she feels bad about it.”

He also recounted the case of Jamal Trulove, who was convicted of murder and sent to prison for half a century until he was acquitted on appeal after serving seven years. He was later awarded $13.1 million from the City of San Francisco in compensatory damages for wrongful incarceration.

“This is the person who could be our next president, and she has no problem sentencing innocent people to death,” DeGregorio commented.

IV. “Natural Born Citizen”

Transitioning to the fourth item, DeGregorio declared, “Kamala Harris is not eligible to become president.” He followed that with a montage of Harris’s now-infamous laughing episodes.

“There are serious questions about whether Kamala Harris is a natural born Citizen,” he continued. “…Let’s bring in the birth certificate…,” which he displayed. “When Kamala was born in 1964, neither of her parents were naturalized U.S. citizens at the time of birth. This means that Kamala Harris was an anchor baby…”

DeGregorio then posited that “natural born Citizen” was intended by the Founders to indicate “both you and your parents need to be citizens.” “…why in the world would you elect someone as president who’s an anchor baby?…No wonder she did a horrible job as a border czar; she just let everyone in, because that’s who she relates to,” he said. “Her parents were immigrants, just like everyone else crossing the border, so you have to ask the question, ‘Does Kamala Harris feel any loyalty to the United States?’ because I’m betting she does not…”

“I don’t understand why Republican states are not suing to stop this,” DeGregorio mused.

He then presented a previously unannounced fifth item, concluding with, “Is this someone we really want as our president?”