Whether it was a publicity stunt to promote his upcoming book (along with Paul Irey), From Forgery to Treason, or a sincere but profound misunderstanding of the law, Douglas Vogt filed a legal action in federal court that was dismissed. I covered the story extensively on this blog.
Vogt makes error
Before continuing with the progress of the legal action, I wanted to show the following screen shot from the book’s web site. The book is subtitled “Two Typographers Present their Proof of Forgery of Obama’s Long Form Birth Certificate.”
One would think that typographers advertising their book, a book relying on claims of typographical expertise, would be at least moderately careful to avoid typographical errors in their promotional material, but there it is writ large: “United Sates.”1
Vogt’s forgery claims are ludicrous, but so was his legal action, an attempt to force a court to declare him “not guilty” of a hypothetical future crime, and to use a civil filing in an attempt to compel a criminal prosecution. Judge Robart explained why the action was ludicrous in his Order to Show Cause.
Vogt makes another error
Nevertheless, it appears that Vogt is going to give it another go with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, itself no stranger to birther lawsuits. I use the future tense because no appeal appears on the court docket as of this writing. Vogt’s appellate petition, a writ of mandamus, appears on the obamaforgerybook.com web site. So let’s examine the document:
That helps us sort matters out. The imaging crackpot is Douglas Vogt and the legal crackpot is Montgomery Blair Sibley (a former attorney).
Vogt’s petition demands the Court of Appeals direct Judge Robart to do the things he decided not to do for good reason when dismissing the action. Vogt repeats his claim that the district court clerk mischaracterized his action. Finally Vogt gives us his term it, “Miscellaneous matter.” Wow, that certainly makes it clear.
Vogt launches skyward calling the Judge’s characterization of his case as “intentional libel” and suggests that the captioning of his case as Vogt v. Obama in an order may be a felony. (The law cited doesn’t apply to captioning a case.)
For those giving odds as to who Vogt’s Jane Doe #2 is, we get this tantalizing sentence:
Coupled with the clear circumstantial evidence contained in Vogt’s sealed affidavit which links Barack Hussein Obama, II with the forger of his putative Certificates of Live Birth, the “public interest” in having these matters determined is overwhelming.
In any case, there are two important questions raised by the appeal:
- How long will it take the Ninth Circuit to affirm the lower court’s action
- Will the opinion be long or short?
1At least he didn’t say “United Snakes.”
Vogt’s appeal to the 9th.
http://www.obamaforgerybook.com/PDF_Files/Petition_to_Appeal_to_the_9th_district_court_11-24-2013.pdf
Hilarious… Does the 9th even have to waste time on this one or can it just ignore it?…
Vogt is wrong on so many instances.
And no the judge is and was under no requirement to bring the matter to a grand jury. He may summon a grand jury when public interest so requires but that’s a far cry from a right or duty to bring Vogt’s musings in front of such a grand jury. In fact, the courts have ruled at various times that one does not have a right to have a grand jury summoned.
As to misprision, first of all Vogt still fails to understand the ‘actively conceals’ component, and fails to understand why a judge should acknowledge receipt of such a notification, or worse, why a judge should somehow rule that Vogt has ‘discharged of his duties’.
Vogt created an interesting mess and when the Judge tried to give him the benefit of the doubt as to what to do with the ‘brief’, Vogt was all upset. The judge should just have it be filed as miscellaneous and have that be the end of it.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the first clause of the first sentence.
I needed a good face-palm.
That is one atrocious design. I take it the hammer & sickle (bizarrely flipped and rotated in order to force a pointless conjunction) are to indicate, so very subtly, the awful truth that Obama is a Soviet sleeper agent? Part of some decades-long plot that failed to account for the dissolution of the USSR? Or that one man (Obama) is going to morph the USA into USSR2?
How is it From Forgery to Treason? Wouldn’t the forgery be, by definition, just an incidental artifact of on the way to committing treason already planned?
Any chance the court can simply rubberstamp the lower court decision?
Sibley tried much of the same in Sibley v Obama. Too bad Vogt/Sibley did not think it important to cite 🙂
The court will be short and it will take 1.5 years.
There is something simultaneously tragic and hilarious about these two moldy, crotchety conspiracy theorists spending their golden years convincing each other that their nonsensical ‘evidence’ is proof that they’ve uncovered the biggest plot to destroy the United States that has ever existed. And nobody who matters wants to hear what they have to say or study their 20 points of forgery.
There you go again….more wannabee booksellers to the rescue. It seems everyone is trying to make a buck on this exercise in futility. The ad mentions the “persons of interest” and “…who did the forgery and how she knew Barack Obama in Hawaii.” So with that little tidbit, we know that the alleged female forger is from Hawaii. My question to John remains unanswered. Who is this female from Hawaii who is said to be the alleged forger? Apparently, Birther Taitz is said to know. Birthers Vogt and Irey apparently know. Zullo must know. Who are the Birthers in Hawaii who know the identity of the female alleged to be the forger and are not telling us?
Because Sibley, errr, Vogt filed this as a writ petition, it’ll only take two or so months before it gets denied. An appeal would have taken two years for the 9th to affirm the district court’s dismissal.
Yes, I missed that one…
Ms. Pope?
Another Taitzism. “The law may not be on my side but national security compels allowing me to go on anyway”.
i’m trying to make my mind up if the quote from mark twain on the bottom left of the book’s website is ironic, or if vogt is thumbing his nose at the birfoons.
sort of like how we are told that forgers are supposed to deliberately make a little mistake for their own fun *rolleyes*
From Fogery to Treason will sweep the nation in the same way as its predecessor, From Justin to Kelly.
There was as story from my youth about the counterfeiter of the US $20 who had engraved a virtually perfect copy, and the only way to tell it from the original was that one of the windows of the White House on the reverse was lit up. The counterfeiter explained when caught that he just didn’t think it right for all the windows to be dark in the White House. I cannot verify the truth of the story.
Would that be “…Old ‘Fogery’ ” ?
I would guess……, nope.
I am often amazed by the birthers’ interpretation of the law with wooden-headed literalism, devoid of precedential context. And I am aware of their belief that they are competent to interpret the law when they obviously aren’t.
I would not want to fall into that kind of error; nonetheless, I do wonder if Mr. Sibley is engaging in the unlawful practice of law by having authored the writ of mandamus on behalf of Mr. Vogt.
The rule in Washington State is
This lay person would read (a)(2) as covering what Sibley did. Bob commented on this blog: “It is not UPL [unlawful practice of law] to ghostwrite.” Somehow I thought that Bob was an attorney, but I could be wrong about that. Still reading the Washington definition, and a lengthy South Carolina Bar Association page on UPL, I wonder if it is. While ghostwriting under the supervision of an attorney is OK (such as a paralegal would do), it doesn’t seem to be OK to do it on ones own. SC explains:
Of course Sibley is trained in the law; he was just disbarred in DC and not admitted to the bar in Washington State so far as I can find. The unlawful practice of law is a “gross misdemeanor” in Washington State.
The Washington State bar investigates the unlawful practice of law when it is “a threat to the general public.” Even if Sibley is engaging in the unlawful practice of law, I would not call what he is doing a “threat to the general public” and I don’t think it would be worth filing a complaint.
Good thing I’m not flogging my expertise as a typesetter.
(Cut me some slack, that was 3:00am my time.)
I thought it was an [un?]intentionally hilarious indictment of the combined mental state of our least favorite Delusional Duo, Vogt and Irey! 😀
Speaking of typos, I came across an article yesterday that declared “Martial Law to finaly take hold in US”. A wingnut finally gets ‘martial law’ right, only to fail in another way! So close …. so far.
They simultaneously believe that the military will follow a directive enacting martial law, AND that the military despises the President and is willing to stage a coup Any Day Now? That’s some weapons-grade cognitive dissonance, that is.
I was a bit overbroad when I said ghostwriting isn’t UPL. The law varies by state, and some states require holding oneself out as an attorney for it to be UPL.
While Sibley’s activities may meet the definition of UPL in some jurisdictions, for the reason you cited, it won’t be prosecuted. Especially when the “victim” (i.e., Vogt) is most willing to go along.
True believers think that everyone in the world is really on their side. They think that when Obama orders the troops to impose martial law on the nation, the armed forces, from the lowest buck private to the top generals, will refuse, and launch a coup to save the country from the “usurper.”
This guy Vogt obviously hasn’t read the papers…Communism surrendered back in 1989.
The only places left that seriously espouse Communism are Cuba, North Korea, and the faculty lounge at City College of New York. And maybe Venezuela, but that’s more to do with the leadership than the nation.
…. which would, eye-ron-ick-ly, involve the widespread implementation of …. martial law.
The more conservative a person is the more there can be the tendency to live in the past and long for “the good old days” to return. That means communism is very much alive in their “minds.” That was when red-white-and blue meant good and all red meant bad.
Well, they’ve been looking for the commies under the bed for roughly a century (before that, it was the anarchists in position of Bogeyman #1); why stop now?
I’ll tell ya why stop now, because domestic terrorists are bigger danger on the homefront. But wingers are too busy identifying with their anti-government stance. Can’t expect them to pretend-chase themselves 😉
Ironically, the idea that you need guns primarily to defend against your own government is a concept totally alien to us Europeans, even though we had lots of (even genocidal) dictatorships in the last 100 years while you Americans have been living free for 240 years now.
The other day we watched a JFK documentary where in one scene an old ex-sheriff said he keeps his gun to defend himself against the federal government; my girlfriend asked me if this was a joke.
This nostalgia for a past that never existed is utterly ridiculous. I’ve studied history and the one thing I have learned for a certainty is this: “The good old days…they were terrible!” There is no such thing.
I crack up at people who think the 1950s and 1960s were the good old days. They should read the newspapers of the period…and the letters-to-the-editors columns. Then they should read the idiocies strewn by right-wing and left-wing extremists. According to the former, Communism was about to take over America (like today), and according to the latter, the capitalist system was in a state of collapse (like today).
And I dare anybody to call the time I grew up in, 1977, as the “good old days.” Let’s see, that year, New York City was broke, crime was rolling, subway trains were filthy and covered with graffiti, a summer blackout led to massive looting and fires, the Son of Sam was terrorizing the City, Jimmy Carter moaned about the “American malaise,” Billy Martin, George Steinbrenner, and Reggie Jackson were at each other’s throats, and everybody was wearing polyester suits and big hair.
And the music? People whine about Lady Gaga today. Back then, we had Donna Summer doing 15-minute orgasms and the unforgettable “Disco Duck.”
Hmpf. “United Sates” still not corrected.
Vogt was on the Andrea King show:
Beginning about 16:00
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/askshow/2013/12/04/the-andrea-shea-king-show–doug-vogt
There is much delusion but this was interesting [note: he calls it Mariposa County]:
“But when he wasn’t going to… when Mike Zullo wasn’t going to use the typewriter stuff, ahh we decided we are going to go and do our own thing. And because also Mike Zullo had gotten or I should say the Sheriff got a letter from his district attorney from Mariposa County which said basically ‘we don’t have jurisdiction and we can’t bring any case against it. It’s only the Secretary of State in Arizona or the Attorney General can bring a case against only the Democratic Party for putting a candidate up that’s not qualified to run for office.’ ”
He also says the forger wrote her name in the LFBC @44:00.
He can’t fix it: he made sure to collapse the layers (so he wouldn’t be accused of forging the ad), so the text isn’t editable.
In case your comment was meant to be taken seriously, the mistake is in the page’s HTML.
I don’t think anyone could bring a case against a party for running an ineligible candidate (per se).
Even in the alternate reality where Obama’s documents are forged, the DA would first have to go after the forger. That would ideally uncover who ordered the forgery and/or knew about it. Depending on who that encompasses, party officials might run into trouble, but the party itself? Unless in some other parallel universe even more far away, there would be enough people involved as to qualify the entire party as a “criminal enterprise” (RICO?), I don’t see how the party could be in legal trouble. The GOP didn’t go down for what Nixon did.
1977 was the “good old days”.
“Acapulco Gold” was $30 a lid. Arizona was playing exciting basketball under Fred Snowden. Girls got naked at Sabino Canyon because it was the thing to do – you wore your finest to church, you wore cutoffs to the mall, you wore you swimsuit at the pool, you got naked at Sabino.
OK, music was kinda weird, but Fleetwood Mac, Linda Ronstadt, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, and even Jimmy Buffet were kicking it. Movies were pretty bad in 1977, but we did get Eraserhead, Star Wars, Close Encounters, Kentucky Fried Movie, and Smokey and the Bandit.
The thing is, “the good ol’ days” are DEFINED by the GOOD things, not the BAD things. I’m sorry you had a bad childhood in the 70’s, but the 70’s for me were great.
Does that mean that nothing bad happened in the 70’s to me or the world? Of course not. The Beatles broke up, National Guard troops killed Kent State students, the Munich Olympics was attacked, Cambodia went insane (no, I mean REALLY insane), Elvis overdosed.