Leo Donofrio, Plaintiff in Donofrio v. Wells, posted a response on his blog concerning a Washington Times reporter discussing both his and Cort Wrotnowski’s Wrotnowski v. Bysiewicz case.

The full posting is below…

Update: InvestigatingObama further pursues this story by pointing out some folks who are trying to mislead the public on exactly how the application and Conference processes work at SCOTUS.

-Phil

THE WASHINGTON TIMES COVERAGE OF DONOFRIO AND WROTNOWSKI SCOTUS CASES
Posted in Uncategorized on December 10, 2008 by naturalborncitizen

Tom Ramstack of The Washington Times has made consistent attempts to report accurately on the SCOTUS cases – Donofrio v. NJ Secretary of State and Wrotnowski v. Connecticut Secretary of State.  Of all the main stream media coverage, Ramstack’s has been the most accurate.

But there are a couple of things I need to clarify about his last two reports from a purely legal standpoint.  The issues involved in these cases are not easy to report accurately.  Most of the reporters are not lawyers and if not a lawyer they are truly at a disadvantage and must really strive to lock down understanding of each key phrase as whole worlds of meaning change on even tiny discrepancies.

This today on Cort’s case:

On the same day the Supreme Court declined to hear one appeal challenging Barack Obama’s right to become president because of questions about his citizenship, Justice Antonin Scalia distributed another appeal on the same issue for the court to consider.

The new case, Cort Wrotnowski v. Susan Bysiewicz, Connecticut Secretary of State, is scheduled to be discussed by the justices at their Dec. 12 private conference. They plan to decide whether to give the case a hearing – again on whether the British citizenship of Mr. Obama’s father makes the president-elect ineligible to assume the office…

Mr. Donofrio helped Mr. Wrotnowski prepare his Supreme Court appeal.

“Cort’s application before [the Supreme Court] incorporates all of the arguments and law in mine, but we improved on the arguments in Cort’s quite a bit as we had more time to prepare it,” Mr. Donofrio said on his blog.

The report should have stressed that, according to Obama, his birth status as a British citizen was “governed” (Obama’s Fight The Smears’ choice of words) by Great Britain in that Obama was a British citizen at the time of his birth, not just his father.

Ramstack also reports:

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting Democratic delegate to Congress, speculated that the Supreme Court is considering appeals that challenge Mr. Obama’s citizenship only long enough to reject them “and lay to rest manufactured doubts about the legitimacy of Obama’s election before the inauguration.”

That’s a rather absurd statement.  Frivolous cases aren’t graced with any respect at all.  If it deserves immediate denial, then they deny it.  But on the same day the order came down rejecting my case, Justice Scalia referred Wrotnowski v. Bysiewicz to the full Court and it was distributed for the Dec. 12 conference.

If the Court wanted to send a message as Norton suggests, they could have denied Cort’s case at the same time as mine.  Now that would have sent the message she suggests.

For example, when a stay application is renewed to a second Justice, that Justice may deny it straight away rather than referring it to the full Court.  Examine the following two SCOTUS dockets where stay applications were denied by the first Justice and then denied by the second Justice upon renewed application:

No. 07A638	Â
Title:	Ate Kays Company, Applicant v. Pennsylvania Department of General Services, et al.
Docketed:	Â
Lower Ct:	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Eastern District

Case Nos.:

(175 EM 2007)

~~~Date~~~	~~~~~~~Proceedings  and  Orders~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Feb 1 2008	Application (07A638) for a stay pending appeal, submitted to Justice Souter.
Feb 2 2008	Application (07A638) denied by Justice Souter.
Feb 6 2008	Application (07A638) refiled and submitted to Justice Scalia.
Feb 7 2008	Application (07A638) denied by Justice Scalia.     —————

 

No. 7A421   Michigan, Applicant v. Corey Ramone Frazier Docketed:   Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Michigan Case Nos.: (131041)     Nov 20 2007 Application (07A421) for stay pending disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari, submitted to Justice Stevens. Nov 20 2007 Application (07A421) denied by Justice Stevens. Nov 28 2007 Application (07A421) refiled and submitted to Justice Alito. Nov 28 2007 Application (07A421) denied by Justice Alito.	Â
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Now let’s take a look at Ramstack’s December 9, 2008 report:

Leo C. Donofrio, a New Jersey lawyer who filed the case, argued that Mr. Obama had British citizenship when he was born, thus disqualifying him from being president under the Constitution’s requirement of being a “natural-born citizen.”

“My case is done,” he said. “I’m perfectly comfortable with their decision.”

Preventing Mr. Obama from becoming president was less of a consideration for him than ensuring constitutional law is followed, he said.

“I’m not worried about Barack Obama, I’m worried about the precedent of law,” Mr. Donofrio said. “This sets a precedent for someone who doesn’t have a tie to this country” to become president…

Fair coverage again.  But it appears as if I intended to imply that Obama had no tie to this country.  I didn’t mean that.  And to Mr. Ramstack’s credit, we did discuss this exact quote.  I told him people might mis-understand.  He was confident otherwise.  And I let it go because I felt like I might be bullying him in that I parsed over multiple statements in his original draft of the story when he called me to verify the statements before going to print.  I was deeply gratified that he took the time and effort to make sure the story was accurate.

But reading that statement in print has confirmed my fears.  It is confusing.

I meant to convey that a person – born to a father who is an alien and who remains an alien not residing here – would probably have a tie to whatever country his father is from.  For example, as to Obama, in 1963 his British citizenship transferred to Kenya, and while he may have dropped his dual national status at the age of 21, the influence of that country and his tie thereto are self evident.

I take personal responsibility for any confusion on this issue.  I should have been more vigilant.

This is why it’s so difficult for news reports to accurately convey legal issues.   Every word is so important.  I cannot stress that enough.

[Watch for blog post #2 today regarding an update on the Chester Arthur story.]