Andy Martin
Anthony Robert Martin-Trigona, usually known as Andy Martin (born 1945), is an American perennial candidate who has never been elected to office, running as both a Democrat and a Republican.
He is a vexatious litigant who has filed over 250 political lawsuits nationwide. In Connecticut, a federal judge once banned Martin from filing lawsuits in any court in the nation without a judge's permission. The federal judge said Martin considered filing lawsuits to be a "veritable sport."
The Nation, The Washington Post, and The New York Times identified Martin as the primary source of false rumors that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was secretly a Muslim during the 2008 presidential election (an allegation Martin had made as early as 2004). In a later interview with CNN, Martin explicitly abandoned this view and now asserts Obama's real father is not Barack Obama Sr., but African-American journalist Frank Marshall Davis.
On October 17, 2008, Martin filed a lawsuit against the state of Hawaii, calling for the public release of Obama's birth certificate and other vital records. At the time, conspiracy theories postulated that Obama was not a natural-born citizen of the United States. Obama had previously posted an image of his short-form birth certificate online. Martin's lawsuit sought a copy of Obama's long-form birth certificate. On November 19, the Supreme Court of Hawaii dismissed Martin's lawsuit.
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