3-Star General: Congress Will Review Lakin Case

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney predicts the incoming Republican-controlled House of Representatives will launch an investigation if Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin is convicted in next week's court martial.

Lakin is on trial for refusing to obey orders to deploy to Afghanistan. He challenged the orders because he questions President Barack Obama's eligibility to serve as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. His court martial is scheduled to begin Dec. 14.

"It looks like he's not being treated fairly," said McInerney in an interview Friday on Denver talk radio station KHOW.

"It's important that he gets a fair trial, which means discovery. Since the Army will not allow that I believe in the final analysis that this will be overturned, but he may have to go to the slammer in Ft. Leavenworth."

Lakin had hoped through the discovery process to force Obama to produce documentary evidence demonstrating his birth and citizenship status so that Obama's authority to give orders as commander-in-chief would be demonstrated or disproven.
As reported earlier by WND, court martial judge Col. Denise Lind, however, simply declared the orders received by Lakin were valid. Lind refused to allow Lakin to address the underlying eligibility issues and limited the scope of the trial to whether Lakin had knowingly disobeyed orders.

McInerney called on Congress to "do its job" and determine whether Obama is constitutionally eligible to serve as president.

"[Lakin] really had a very important point. He is not a birther, he is a constitutionalist," said McInerney. "Now it shouldn't be the job of a lieutenant colonel and flight surgeon in the U.S. Army to be the constitutionalist. It's the job of the Congress and the executive agency to do that. But we've had 44 presidents of the United States and only one, the current president, has not shown a valid birth certificate."

McInerney suggested Lakin is certain to be convicted if the court martial proceeds.

"The outcome is evident to me that this is a slam dunk," said McInerney. "They're not going to let him really talk about it. They're avoiding the issue.

"The way they conduct themselves is going to be extremely important for the follow-on investigation for the House of Representatives," added McInerney, who said the House Armed Services Committee could hold hearings to determine whether the military handled the case properly.

"The smartest thing the Army could do is not to have [the trial]," said McInerney, who suggested the court should let the case go "low profile."

"I don't think they're going to do that. They're going to make the mistake of trying him, and then you're going to have a court of record that will condemn them for the way they conducted it."

McInerney held up his own treatment by the trial judge to illustrate the unfairness of the proceedings thus far. Lind has refused to allow McInerney or any other expert witness requested by the defense to testify at Lakin's court martial.                                       

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