Andy Martin, Started the BIRTHER Movement
I wrote this story about 5 years ago. This was before Donald Trump took over the BIRTHER movement. Trump lies and says Clinton started the Birther rumors. She absolutely did NOT. A man named Andy Martin did. He is infamous for filing one lawsuit after another. Frivolous, of course. So let’s stop with lies about HRC!
Now that the POTUS has released his COLB (Certificate of Live Birth), stories are still being circulated ... rumors, falsehoods, lies and propaganda that Obama isn't a legitimate POTUS. Not much has changed. Obama Haters, whether they are BIRTHERS or not, are on the prowl for their next fix. It appears his education is next on their agenda. I've heard these fringe elements from the right wing are the new John Birch Society. Now they are being tagged as the ALT RIGHT. It's really sad when we think about it. There are Americans, living in this great nation, trashing our sitting Presient with head-spinning lies. When did it all start? The right wing extremists are trying to blame Hillary Clinton, when she was a Democratic nominee, and /or her supporters for questioning Obama's birth certificate, saying he was born in Kenya. That's not so. I was a staunch Clinton supporter, but soon found out most of this crazy propaganda was coming from the right. The rumors were started by a man named Andy Martin. Martin got a lot of leverage from making false claims about our current POTUS. He issued a press release that contained those rumors and they were picked up by the infamous FReeper web site, www.freerepublic.com, where you can see categories at the top of their web page in red font, devoted to smearing Obama on all levels. Note of caution: if you go there, your stomach may churn when you see all the hype and falsehoods posted there. Take a further look at this man, Andy Martin, if you will. You can see how the power of lying in the age of the Internet can be so very harmful.
Read the whole article that was published in the NY Times. I felt this is an important enough issue to include the entire article
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us/politics/13martin.html
******UPDATE******** More information about Any Martin
www.datalounge.com/…
Theories about Mr. Obamax92s background have taken on a life of their own. But independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind up at Mr. Martinx92s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.
Sean Hannity gave this racist POS, Martin, an entire hour on his show....
We should write to the FAUX NEWS and tell them to fire Sean Hannity.
hannity@foxnews.com
Also written by the same author, Jim Rutenberg
The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama
By JIM RUTENBERG Published: October 12, 2008
The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.” The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.” Andy Martin is known for filing many lawsuits. That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian. The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background. Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, “I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her. Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs. But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government. An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years. He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.” Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases. Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors. “Everybody uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.” As for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.” When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on “Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact. It was not Mr. Martin's first turn on national television. The CBS News program "48 Hours" in 1993 devoted an hourlong program, "See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits," to what it called his prolific filings. (Mr. Martin has also been known as Anthony Martin-Trigona.) He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval. He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine. In the 1990s, Mr. Martin was jailed in a case in Florida involving a physical altercation. His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack — updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases — amazes those from his past. “Well, that’s just a bookend for me,” said Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, whom Mr. Martin sued for refusing to support him. Mr. Slade said Mr. Martin was driven like “a run-over dog, but he’s fearless.” Given Mr. Obama’s unusual background, which was the focus of his first book, it was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy. Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Mr. Obama wrote. For a few childhood years, Mr. Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as loosely following a liberal Islam. Kitty Bennett contributed reporting. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: October 14, 2008 An article on Monday about Andy Martin, who has been a source of some of the false rumors about Senator Barack Obama’s background, referred incorrectly to an academic institution where a study of the rumors’ origins was conducted by Prof. Danielle Allen. The Institute for Advanced Study is located in Princeton, N.J., but is not part of Princeton University.
