Army Birther Terry Lakin Faces Court Martial
Lakin is a "birther," a group that does not believe that President Obama was born in the United States despite extensive evidence to the contrary. He said he considers any orders from the president, who is the military's commander in chief, to be "illegal."
Lakin did not report to Fort Campbell, Ky., this week for deployment, opting instead to go to the Pentagon, where, as MSNBC reports, he was informed by his brigade commander, Col. Gordon Roberts, that he would face court martial. His was also stripped of a pass to enter the Pentagon and a government laptop computer.
In a video posted to YouTube last month, Lakin said, "I believe all servicemen and women, and the American people, deserve the truth about President Obama's constitutional eligibility to the office of the presidency and the commander in chief." He promised to "disobey" orders to deploy and acknowledge he was "inviting" court martial.
"The minimal invasion to any politician's privacy from having to show an original, signed birth certificate is far less than the harms to our country by someone not qualified whose election would thus subvert the law and the truth," he said.
During the presidential campaign, the Obama team posted the president's Certification of Live Birth. Hawaiian state law prohibits the release of the original birth certificate outside of specific extenuating circumstances, and the state considers the Certificate of Live Birth to be the birth certificate.
The director of the Hawaii State Department of Health says she has seen and verifies the original birth certificate. In addition, records show that Mr. Obama's 1961 birth announcement was printed in two Hawaii newspapers.
Lakin is an 18-year veteran and Bronze Star Medal recipient, the New York Daily News reports.
According to Politico, he is being assigned to duty at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington while he is investigated for violating the Uniformed Code of Military Justice by missing the movement of a unit and violating an order.