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| Orly Taitz | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 30, 1962 Kishinev, Moldavian SSR[1] |
| Residence | Laguna Niguel, California, USA |
| Alma mater | Hebrew University, Taft Law School |
| Occupation | Lawyer, dentist and real estate agent |
| Known for | Filing lawsuits challenging Barack Obama's eligibility to serve as President of the United States |
| Spouse(s) | Yosef Taitz |
| Children | 3 sons[2][3][4] |
| Website orlytaitzesq.com |
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Orly Taitz (born August 30, 1962[1]) is an Orange County, California-based dentist and lawyer[5][6] who is a leading figure in the "birther" movement, which challenges whether Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen eligible to serve as President of the United States. She also promotes a number of other conspiracy theories both related and unrelated to Obama.
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Orly Taitz was born to a Jewish family in Chişinău, Moldavian SSR,[4] (present day Moldova) and emigrated to Israel in 1981.[1] During her residence in Israel, Taitz obtained a dentistry degree at Hebrew University.[1] In 1987, she met Yosef Taitz who proposed four months later. Taitz lived for some time in Romania,[7] Orly emigrated to the United States in May 1987, marrying Yosef in Las Vegas, Nevada;[4] Taitz became a citizen of the United States in 1992.[7] She received her law degree from Taft Law School,[8] and passed the California bar examination in 2002.[9] She obtained a California state real estate broker's license that expired in February 2008.[10]
Taitz currently lives in Laguna Niguel, California,[11] and owns dental practices in nearby Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita.[4] A photo caption accompanying a 1990 Los Angeles Times article identified Taitz as a volunteer at the Share Our Selves dental clinic in Costa Mesa.[12] She has three sons,[4] holds a second degree black belt in Taekwondo, and speaks five languages: English, Hebrew, Romanian, Russian and Spanish.[5][13][14]
Before her national news exposure, Taitz had previously been personally involved in 22 lawsuits in Orange County civil court.[15] She was quoted in the Orange County Register in 2006 supporting Israeli military actions against Hamas and Hezbollah,[16] and downplaying the impact of the espionage trial of two American Israel Public Affairs Committee staffers[17] (charges against both of them were subsequently dropped).[18]
Taitz said that she lost relatives in the Holocaust, and that her grandmother witnessed the Kishinev Pogrom.[13][15]
Taitz alleges that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and that he falsified his Selective Service papers and his application to the Illinois bar.[19] Regarding Obama, Taitz has said: "I believe he is the most dangerous thing one can imagine, in that he represents radical communism and radical Islam: He was born and raised in radical Islam, all of his associations are with radical Islam, and he was groomed in the environment of the dirty Chicago mafia. Can there be anything scarier than that?"[20]
Other Obama-related conspiracy theories Taitz has repeated include:
Taitz also has advanced or supported a number of other conspiracy theories not directly related to Obama, including: that Goldman Sachs runs the United States Treasury,[20] that Baxter International has developed a bird flu vaccine that kills people,[20] that Representative Alcee Hastings and the House of Representatives are planning to build at least six labor camps,[20] that Hugo Chavez owns the software that runs American voting machines,[15] that FactCheck is untrustworthy because of its links to the Annenberg Foundation,[15] and that Fox News is partly owned by Saudi Arabia.[20] Taitz has also advocated numerous Internet-related conspiracy theories, including complaints about alleged PayPal attacks and the previous deletion of her Wikipedia entry and allegations that Google improperly flagged her web page as an attack site and suppressed search results for her name.[15]
In November 2008, Taitz filed a lawsuit on behalf of independent presidential candidate Alan Keyes, suing California's secretary of state for allegedly failing to ascertain Obama's eligibility for president before placing him on the ballot.[1] The case was dismissed on May 4, 2009.[21]
Taitz filed an emergency injunction request in the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 on behalf of libertarian vice presidential candidate Gail Lightfoot, urging the court to stop the certification of California's 2008 election results. The court declined to hear the case.[1]
Taitz represented Stefan F. Cook, a Major in the United States Army Reserve, who challenged his order to be deployed to Afghanistan because of his claim that Obama is not a legitimate president. The case was dismissed when the Army Reserve recalled his order to deploy.
On May 4, 2009, Taitz and her organization, "Defend Our Freedoms Foundation", were sued by Philip J. Berg, another prominent figure in the Birther movement, accusing Taitz and her organization of harassing Berg's supporters. The allegations included a claim that Taitz uses "JS Kit" software, which "tracks" and "hacks" computers and individuals that visit her websites and blogs. Berg also alleges that, when Taitz filed a lawsuit on behalf of Alan Keyes against Obama, she plagiarized Berg's work. In addition, Berg claims that "Defend Our Freedoms Foundation" does not have a proper Federal Tax Identification Number, that Taitz claimed Obama's "thugs" were stealing money from her supporters by making fake e-mail addresses and encouraging people to send PayPal donations to them instead of her real e-mail address, and that she falsely complained to the Federal government that her own websites had been hacked.[22]
On September 8, 2009, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter set a hearing on the defense's Motion to Dismiss and a routine scheduling conference for October 5, 2009.[23] (A scheduling conference is a preliminary proceeding and does not involve any determination on the merits.) At the hearing, the court heard arguments on the defendants motion to dismiss and declined to rule from the bench, instead taking the matter under submission. The scheduling conference was not held, with the previously set "tentative" dates being permitted to stand.[24]
On October 29, 2009, Carter dismissed the lawsuit and stated he was deeply concerned that Taitz "may have suborned perjury through witnesses she intended to bring before this court."[25] At least one sworn statement accusing Taitz was submitted to the court.[26]
In September 2009, Taitz was retained by Captain Connie Rhodes, a US Army physician. Rhodes sought a restraining order to prevent her forthcoming deployment to Iraq. In the request for a restraining order, Taitz argued the order was illegal since Obama was illegally serving as president. On September 16, federal judge Clay D. Land rejected the motion and denounced it as frivolous. In his opinion, the judge noted that Rhodes had not previously raised any objections to orders she had received from Obama since he had been sworn in. He noted that while she seemed to have "conscientious objections" to taking orders from Obama, she did not seem to object to serving under him "as long as she is permitted to remain on American soil." Land then upbraided Taitz for using military officers as pawns to further her claims that Obama was not qualified to be President. He also expressed astonishment at Ms. Taitz' apparent misunderstanding of American judicial fundamentals, saying that she was trying to make Obama "'prove his innocence'" to 'charges' that are based upon conjecture and speculation."[27]
Within hours of Land's decision, Taitz told the news site Talking Points Memo that she felt Land's refusal to hear her case was an act of treason.[28] Two days later, she filed a motion to stay Rhodes' deployment pending rehearing of the dismissal order. She repeated her treason allegations against Land and made several other intemperate statements, including claims that Land was aiding and abetting purported aspirations of "dictatorship" by Obama.[29] Land rejected the motion as frivolous and ordered her to show cause why she should not be fined $10,000 for abuse of judicial process.[30]
A few hours later, a letter bearing Rhodes's signature arrived, stating that Taitz filed the motion without her knowledge or consent, asking Land to remove Taitz as her attorney of record in the case, and stating that it was her "plan to file a complaint with the California State Bar due to [Taitz's] reprehensible and unprofessional actions."[31] On September 26, 2009, Taitz filed a motion with the court seeking to withdraw as counsel for Rhodes, so she could divulge in court "privileged attorney-client communications" since the dismissed Rhodes case "is now a quasi-criminal prosecution of the undersigned attorney, for the purpose of punishment."[32]
On October 13, 2009, Judge Clay Land ordered "Counsel Orly Taitz ... to pay $20,000.00 to the United States, through the Middle District of Georgia Clerk's Office, within thirty days of the date of this Order as a sanction for her misconduct in violation of Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure." Land's decision stated:
The Court finds that counsel's conduct was willful and not merely negligent. It demonstrates bad faith on her part. As an attorney, she is deemed to have known better. She owed a duty to follow the rules and to respect the Court. Counsel's pattern of conduct conclusively establishes that she did not mistakenly violate a provision of law. She knowingly violated Rule 11. Her response to the Court's show cause order is breathtaking in its arrogance and borders on delusional. She expresses no contrition or regret regarding her misconduct. To the contrary, she continues her baseless attacks on the Court.[33]
Upon learning of Land's ruling, Taitz said she would appeal the sanction, declaring that Judge Land was "scared to go against the regime" of the "oppressive" Obama administration, and that the sanction was an attempt to "intimidate" her.[34] On March 15, 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the sanctions against Taitz, ordering her to pay the $20,000 fine. [35]
Following the Rhodes v. MacDonald decision, and Taitz's subsequent comments regarding Judge Land, allegations that Taitz had violated her ethical obligation as a California attorney surfaced. Because of Taitz's demeaning comments regarding Judge Land, attorney Subodh Chandra filed an ethics complaint with the State Bar Association of California arguing Taitz had violated her ethical obligation as an attorney.[36]
Taitz has also actively promoted her theories in Israel, where she claims that "the vast majority" of the population supports her views.[13] She has appeared on the Channel 10 nightly news show "London and Kirschenbaum", was the subject of a feature on Channel 1 TV, and filmed a video for the website Arutz 7. Israel's Russian language media, such as Channel 9 and Vesti, the country's largest Russian-language newspaper, have also given attention to Taitz.[13]
In March of 2010, Taitz successfully qualified to run for the office of California Secretary of State.[37] At the same time, she challenged the eligibility of her Republican Party primary opponent, former NFL player Damon Dunn, claiming that he is a registered Democrat and therefore ineligible to run on the Republican ballot. [38]
Taitz first received media attention in connection with Obama eligibility questions in late 2008.[39]
Taitz was interviewed by co-hosts David Shuster and Tamron Hall on MSNBC on August 3, 2009. Various media outlets called her appearance an "implosion",[40] or that "she turned into barking Bessarabian goo on camera".[15] Taitz repeated her accusations that Shuster was a "brownshirt" in a phone interview the following week.[15]
Media descriptions of Taitz have included "Queen Bee of people obsessed with Barack Obama's birth certificate" and "The Queen Bee of Birferstan",[6] and a "professional whack-a-doodle".[41] Meghan Daum of the Los Angeles Times suggested that August is "the time when bizarre personalities and ideas find their way into the mainstream media. This year, it's Orly Taitz and the 'birthers.'"[42] The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies included Taitz in a list of people who have "espoused beliefs they claim are rooted in fact and have a rational justification, but actually are motivated by ideology or emotion".[43]
In popular culture crossovers, Salon suggested Taitz as a possible replacement for Paula Abdul on American Idol, indicating she might be "the most entertaining 'Idol' judge yet",[44] while The Faster Times suggested Taitz as a community lecturer who "could teach the CIA a thing or two about forgery".[45]
Bill O'Reilly, a commentator on Fox News Channel, called Taitz a "nut". In response, she organized a protest outside Fox News headquarters in New York City in November, 2009, which drew an estimated 15 to 20 attendees.[46]
In 2010 she was represented by celebrity lawyer Bradford Cohen in a hearing involving the fraudulent use of her signature in a federal case in Broward County, Florida.[47] During the hearing she was repeatedly asked questions about an alleged sexual affair with fellow "Birther" Charles Lincoln, who was accused of falsely signing her name to court documents. At one point during the hearing Cohen objected to an irrelevant question and stated "I don't know where we are going with this, I feel like I am in the X-files." [48]
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