Trump fuels theory over whether Kamala Harris is eligible for VP (2024)

President Trump was accused by Democrats yesterday of “making a fool of himself” by stoking a theory that Kamala Harris may not be eligible for the role of vice-president despite being born in the US.

He praised a conservative lawyer who questioned Ms Harris’s citizenship because her parents were foreign nationals at her birth, but the row appears only to have galvanised Democratic supporters. More than $50 million has been pledged to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign since he named Ms Harris as his running-mate on Tuesday.

Separately, Mr Trump refused to bow to Democratic demands for extra funds to run widescale postal voting — on the grounds that it will lead to fraud — but was forced to admit later that he and his wife Melania have themselves requested postal votes.

The claim against Ms Harris, who was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, echoed the so-called birther conspiracy pushed by Mr Trump a decade ago suggesting that Barack Obama was not an American-born citizen, and therefore an illegitimate president. It was dismissed by many as a racist attack on the first black president but even so Mr Obama was forced to publish his birth certificate, showing he was born in Hawaii, to finally quash the speculation.

Asked at a White House briefing about the Harris claim, Mr Trump said: “So I just heard that today, that she doesn’t meet the requirements. And, by the way, the lawyer that wrote that piece is a very highly qualified, very talented lawyer. I have no idea if that’s right. I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen.”

He added: “I don’t know about it, I just heard about it. I’ll take a look.”

Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and adviser, told CBS later: “He just said that he had no idea whether that’s right or wrong. I don’t see that as promoting it. But, look, at the end of the day it’s something that’s out there.”

John Eastman, a law professor in California, wrote in Newsweek that there was a legitimate if arcane constitutional debate over the assumption that anyone born on US soil automatically becomes a citizen. Article II of the constitution states that “no person except a natural born citizen . . . shall be eligible to the office of president”.

For the definition of a “natural born citizen” Mr Eastman pointed to the 14th Amendment wording that “All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

Mr Eastman, who lost a 2010 bid for the Republican nomination for California attorney-general to a candidate defeated by Ms Harris, argued that the Supreme Court had never made a definitive ruling on whether “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” could rule out citizenship for children born to overseas nationals who owed allegiance to a foreign power.

Mr Eastman said that Ms Harris’s parents could have been on student visas. “If [this was] indeed the case, then derivatively from her parents, Harris was not subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States at birth, but instead owed her allegiance to a foreign power or powers — Jamaica, in the case of her father, and India, in the case of her mother — and was therefore not entitled to birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment as originally understood.”

Ms Harris, 55, appearing yesterday alongside Mr Biden, 77, to sign registration papers for November’s election, was asked about Republican attacks. She said: “I’m signing this because I am in this race to win with that guy right there, and we’re going to get it done.”

A Democratic Party spokesman also denounced the president’s remarks. “Donald Trump was the national leader of the grotesque, racist birther movement with respect to President Obama . . . So it’s unsurprising, but no less abhorrent, that as Trump makes a fool of himself straining to distract the American people from the horrific toll of his failed coronavirus response that his campaign and their allies would resort to wretched, demonstrably false lies in their pathetic desperation.”

Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, compared Mr Eastman’s idea to the “flat Earth theory”. He told The New York Times: “I hadn’t wanted to comment on this because it’s such an idiotic theory. There is nothing to it.”

Concerns over the ability of the US postal service to cope with the anticipated massive increase in voting by mail deepened yesterday when it was revealed that it had warned 46 states that it could not guarantee to deliver all ballots in time for them to be counted. Forty states were given a heightened alert that their postal vote deadlines were “incongruous” with delivery practices.

The warnings come amid a funding crisis that prompted an overtime ban and other cost-saving measures by Louis DeJoy, a former logistics executive and donor to Mr Trump who became postmaster general this summer.

Democrats last night said they had secured an investigation of Mr DeJoy’s cutbacks by the USPS inspector general, an internal ombudsman, amid fears that delays will play into Mr Trump’s frequent warnings that an election with higher levels of postal voting will be “rigged” against him. Mr DeJoy has ordered operational changes and a clampdown on overtime in an effort to fix the financially troubled service.

A spokeswoman for the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren said that the USPS inspector general would examine conflicts of interest regarding Mr DeJoy, who has donated $2.7 million to Mr Trump and fellow Republicans.

Barack Obama lambasted the Trump administration who threatening to withhold funds for the postal service. “Everyone depends on the USPS. Seniors for their social security, veterans for their prescriptions, small businesses trying to keep their doors open. They can’t be collateral damage for an administration more concerned with suppressing the vote than suppressing the virus,” he said.

Hillary Clinton added: “Trump and Republicans aren’t just trying to dismantle the USPS - a crucial American institution. They’re trying to dismantle American democracy, and using a deadly pandemic they made even deadlier to do it. We have to fight back and we have to win.”

•Mr Trump visited his brother Robert, 71, who was said to be “very ill”, in a New York hospital last night. The president was seen entering the New York Presbyterian Hospital yesterday afternoon wearing a facemask, and stayed for around 45 minutes.

“I hope he’s okay. He has a tough time. He’s having a tough time,” Mr Trump told reporters. “I have a wonderful brother. We’ve had a great relationship for a long time. From day one. Long time. And he’s in hospital right now. Hopefully, he’ll be all right, but he’s having a hard time.”

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