Archive | Obama legal fees

The circus is back in town

By Dr. Conspiracy on August 7, 2012 in Donald Trump, Obama legal fees

The carnival barker is back with more nonsense about Barack Obama.

In the wake of Mitt Romney’s continued refusal to disclose tax records that could shed light on his claims that his business career makes him fit to become President, Donald Trump suggests that Obama trade his college admission (and other) records for the Romney tax returns. That’s silly in my estimation, but political maneuvering is not what I comment on here. What does warrant comment is his wild assertion:

You know, Obama spent over $4 million in legal fees to keep these things quiet

In fact, Obama hasn’t spent anything I can find to keep any document quiet¹. In the few lawsuits Obama has defended, there were issues beyond release of records and releasing records could not have resolved anything. Most lawsuits were quickly resolved with a simple motion to dismiss and the $4 million number is absurd. Further, the release of Obama’s long form birth certificate in 2011 should dispel any idea that his releasing records satisfies anyone and would stem the flood of frivolous allegations made in the form of a lawsuit.

More articles on Obama legal fees at Obama Conspiracy Theories
What’s Obama’s Birther Legal Bill? – Mother Jones magazine

¹One might count one motion to quash a subpoena while a motion to dismiss was pending, but in that case Obama’s attorney Frederic Woocher was acting pro bono (no fee).

Neo-birthers

By Dr. Conspiracy on April 13, 2011 in Birthers, Donald Trump, Obama legal fees

First, let me share an email I received just recently from someone I know personally, as part of a discussion on Dr. Fukino’s recent revelation that the Obama hospital birth certificate was signed by a doctor:

I’ll state now as I have throughout the last 2+ years, there is most likely some reason why Obama hasn’t released his “long form” version. It may have nothing to do with the place of his birth. It may be that there is something personally “embarrassing” (which in my book means nothing), or something that might be politically embarrassing – for example, something that will point in a different direction [than] the official O narrative (as outlined in his books).

I have no idea and don’t pretend to know. However, I do know this. A man does not hide that which doesn’t need to be hidden.

The person who wrote this would have said before, that there was a possibility of family fraud in the birth registration. For him, that possibility is now pretty much off the table, but given that Obama has “spent millions” keeping his origins sealed, there must be something.

This view is what I am calling “neo-birtherism”, the belief that even if Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, there must be something wrong in the story of his origins, even if they don’t know what it is. I’m going to apply this “neo-birther” label to Sarah Palin, who embraced neo-birtherism in a Fox News interview praising Donald Trump for his self-proclaimed efforts to get to the bottom of the issue in Hawaii.

Fundamentalist birthers will continue to hold to their dogma that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, Hawaiian officials are lying and the birth certificate is a forgery. However, that seems to be an increasingly fringe view in light of all of the evidence now available to the public.

Palin buttresses birther base

By Dr. Conspiracy on April 13, 2011 in 2012 Presidential Election, Donald Trump, Obama legal fees, Videos

While admitting that she believes Barack Obama was born in Hawaii (and presumably that the sun rises in the east), Sarah Palinn nevertheless supports Donald Trump’s claimed investigation in Hawaii. There must be something wrong or else Obama wouldn’t have spent $2 million to keep whatever it is hidden. She praises Trump for getting involved and hopes that he, with his significant resources, will “get to the bottom of it.” She said this in a Fox News interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJJM7WoRKpQ

The loopy Fox News interviewer lent credibility to the totally debunked $2 million myth by saying that she had heard it.

Obama’s legal fees

By Dr. Conspiracy on April 8, 2011 in Alan Keyes, Debunking, Featured Articles, Lawsuits, Obama legal fees, Philip Berg

An argument in the form of a question

Central to the birther position is a question that is some variation of:

If Obama has nothing to hide, when why has he spent $81 Berjillion¹ dollars on legal fees to seal his records?”

This question actually hides two assumptions:

Obama has spent $81 Berjillion¹ dollars on legal fees
Obama is using lawyers to seal his records

Usually, since the argument is made in the form of a question, no one actually justifies the underlying claims in the question. Let’s look at them.

Obama has spent $81 Berjillion dollars on legal fees

Where does this number come from? I’ve seen two arguments. The first involves the fact that the same legal firm, Perkins Coie, represented both President Obama and his Presidential Campaign. Federal Election Commission filings reveal millions of dollars in legal fees spent by the Campaign. If one had the total of all the legal expenses and subtracted all the other campaign legal expenses, what would be left should be what was spent by the Campaign defending Obama eligibility lawsuits. However, since the “all other” number is not known, the answer is just a wild guess. Another approach is to assume that all other campaign legal expenses ended the moment Obama was elected and that every legal expense since them is for defending Obama eligibility lawsuits. However, one need only glance at the FEC page to see hundreds of campaign filings made since November of 2008 and add that to the cost of FEC post-election audits. To top that off, no one has shown (to my knowledge) that any Campaign dollars went to defend Obama eligibility lawsuits. Continue Reading →

Birther math (part 8) Complex Numbers

By Dr. Conspiracy on July 5, 2010 in Birthers, Obama legal fees

The numbers we deal with most often are the natural numbers: 1, 2, 3…. When it comes to money, we need fractions, what we call “rational numbers”. There are special numbers like pi, too. What all of these numbers have in common is that they are “real numbers.” You can order them in a row by size and you can do math with them. Some can be really large (like the US deficit) and some can be really small (like the percentage of Obama eligibility cases won by plaintiffs), but they are all real numbers.

In math there are some questions that cannot be answered by real numbers, like what number squared equals minus 1. For that, mathematicians created a special “imaginary number” and represented it with the symbol i. You can multiply real numbers by imaginary numbers, and you can add them too. When you add a real number and an imaginary number, the result is a complex number and it is written like “6 + 7i” where 6 is the real part and 7 is the imaginary part.

Here’s where birther math comes in. Continue Reading →

Obama lawyer denies “millions” in fees

By Dr. Conspiracy on December 29, 2009 in Lawsuits, Obama legal fees

This is old news, but as the Internet myth of President Obama spending millions of dollars in legal fees “sealing” documents persists, it bears repeating.

Obama attorney in the California case of Keyes v Bowen (one of the three known cases where Obama was represented by private counsel), Fredric Woocher, said:

“This suit, like all of the others that have been filed challenging Obama’s qualifications for the Presidency, is frivolous,” he said in an email to POLITICO, adding that he is, in fact, working pro bono. “There is absolutely no truth to the stories about the untold millions supposedly being paid to us,” he said.

Politico.com

Birthers waste millions in taxpayer dollars

By Dr. Conspiracy on September 25, 2009 in Lounge, Obama legal fees

You’ve heard, I’m sure, the claim that Obama has spent some large amount of money (since the amount is a wild guess, specifics vary widely) keeping his birth certificate a secret. Those who follow these questions know that nothing Obama can do will make the Conspiracy Theorists withdraw. If he was born in Hawaii, then he’s not a natural born citizen anyway. If a court rules the against them, it just means the judge is traitor. If nothing Obama can do (short of resigning) will have any effect on birther activity, then it is certain that the birthers bear all of the responsibility for all the public funds spent in dealing with birtherism.

What are those costs?

Members of Congress are flooded with emails, letters and phone calls asking questions and making demands related to birther theories. Their staff read and answer the mail.
State officials, including secretaries of state, are pestered with birther questions.
FOIA requests (which in most cases are free to the requester) have been filed, and must be researched and responded to
The state and federal courts have been flooded with cases (at least 60 actions!) and many of the plaintiffs have asked that the filing fee be waived.
Many of the cases involve government defendants (state secretaries of state, Nancy Pelosi, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Elections Commission, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Clinton, Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Gates, various military commanders, the US House of Representatives and the US Senate — not to mention Barack and Michelle Obama). All of these are defended at public expense.

Add up the time and effort of congressional staff, judges, law clerks, state officials and federal agency staffers. It’s got to be in the millions. Birthers are not harmless.

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