Lucas Smith, the eBay seller who claims he has an authentic copy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate issued in Kenya, flew in from the Dominican Republic to show up Tuesday in U.S. District Judge David Carter’s courtroom in Santa Ana, Calif., to testify as a witness in a case challenging the president’s eligibility.
Despite evidence that the Kenyan birth certificate touted by Smith may be a forgery, Taitz has decided to advance the document as part of her case to establish that Obama fails to meet the “natural born citizen” requirement specified in Section 1, Article Two of the U.S. Constitution as a qualification to serve as president of the United States.
At the hearing Tuesday, Judge Carter ruled Smith would have to testify at a later date in the proceedings, despite the protestations of plaintiffs’ attorney Orly Taitz that Smith’s life was in jeopardy.
WND has previously reported that in several self-produced YouTube.com videos Smith has disclosed his questionable background, which allegedly includes a lengthy criminal record involving check forgery and a reported attempt to sell his kidney to a man in need of an organ transplant.
A search of eBay records documents show Smith, under the User ID “colmado_naranja,” has participated as a buyer in a series of eBay auctions in which he has purchased historic birth certificates, including the birth certificates of prominent people such as Ernest Hemingway, Elvis Presley, Leonard Nimoy, Babe Ruth and John Kennedy.
The last of these purchases was Aug. 28, seven days after he released information about the alleged Kenyan birth certificate on YouTube. In the video, however, the birth certificate was difficult to read in its entirety.
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Sources tell WND that Smith intended to present himself to Coast Province General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya, as a collector of historic birth certificates who was interested in seeing if he could obtain a copy of President Obama’s birth certificate.
Another theory is that Smith, who had some six auctions removed by eBay in various attempts to sell his alleged Kenyan birth certificate, was trying to establish the basis of a lawsuit against eBay by demonstrating that the online giant allowed birth certificate auctions to conclude for a wide range of famous people.
In papers prepared for the federal court case, Taitz has now released a complete copy of the Lucas Smith document.
WND has also learned that Smith intends to press his claim that the document is genuine based on the 2009 signature of Helton Maganga, the current chief administrator at Coast Province General Hospital in Mombasa, and on a hospital seal displayed in the document’s lower right corner.
Posters of comments on Smith’s YouTube page, “Inspector Smith’s Channel,” have questioned whether Smith may himself have been tricked into buying a forged document in Kenya.
Other posters have suggested Smith is holding out for a substantial payment to surrender his document for authentication in Kenya.
On page 54 of over 2,700 comments posted on “Inspector Smith’s Channel” on YouTube, “bsteadman1” commented: “It would seem to me that one or more of the Internet sites that claim they will pay big bucks for the original Obama BC could get together and offer to pay Lucas a reasonable sum of money for his document, CONTINGENT ON IT BEING AUTHENTICATED.”
Should Smith provide WND with a complete and legible copy of his alleged birth certificate, WND remains willing to request in writing either verification or denial of the document’s authenticity from Coast Province General Hospital.
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