In a New York State of Mind
While Everyone was Looking at Kamala, Biden Lawfare Hunts Down RFK, Jr.
The United States will allow a citizen to hold passports from more than one country—that’s legal—but you can only have one primary residence.
It’s easy to switch. Hillary Clinton, for example, was born in Illinois, served as First Lady of Arkansas when her husband was governor there, and her last elected office was as Senator from New York. Barack Obama has resided in Hawaii, California, New York, and Massachusetts, before finally claiming residency in Illinois, which elected him first to the state legislature and then to the Senate. Donald Trump was elected President when he was a New York resident, but today he’s a Florida resident.
You can be a serial state-switcher, but you can’t have two primary residences at the same time. You can own multiple houses, but you have to claim one primary residence.
Just so you don’t think the Biden regime only uses lawfare on Trump, Biden is busy suing another political opponent. While most of us were busy watching Hillbilly Elegy or laughing at how Haughty Kamala sneered at protestors, “I’m speaking!” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK) is in court right now, fighting over where he lives.
The lawsuit, filed in New York, was initiated by Clear Choice Political Action Committee (PAC), a Super PAC that’s in the bag for Biden. You can see on their website that they haven’t shifted over to Harris—they’re still promoting Biden and raising money for him.
So Clear Choice PAC has filed a lawsuit over RFK’s primary residence. RFK says he resides in Westchester, which is a tony neighborhood of New York City, sort of to the north and close to Long Island. New York residency is important to RFK because he picked billionaire Nicole Shanahan as his vice president. Shanahan is a Californian, no way around that. There is a long-held but somewhat false belief that the President and Vice President on a ticket must be from different states.
This is way more complicated than it ought to be … but here goes. This notion comes from a Constitutional provision that says that an Elector from the Electoral College cannot vote for two people from his or her home state. In other words, if I’m the Elector for California, I can only cast one vote for a person from California. So if two people are on the ballot from California as President and Vice President (example RFK and Shanahan), I can’t vote the ticket. I can vote one or the other, but not both. In truth, it gets even more complicated than that, but it’s really not worth delving into. Let’s just say, it’s been at least an American tradition—if not an actual law—that a President and Vice President must be from different states. (In actual practice, this rule about not being able to vote for two candidates from your home state might not have much impact on the national election. For instance, an Elector from Florida could vote for both RFK and Shanahan even if both were from California.)
Since RFK has claimed his primary residency in New York and Shanahan is Californian, he figured he was in the clear.
Biden’s Clear Choice PAC is challenging RFK’s assertion that he’s a New Yorker. The PAC filed a lawsuit in Albany which is going to be decided by a bench trial, that is, no jury.
RFK is on the ballot in 42 states so far, but New York—which has a lot of votes in the Electoral College—wants to remove him from the New York ballot, because they argue RFK really lives in California. Even his cousin, Stephen Smith, Jr., has testified that RFK resides in California.
How do you prove where your residence is? In most cases, it’s so obvious it’s not necessary. But here is what RFK is facing.
RFK does not own or rent a home, condo, town home, or other living quarters in Westchester. He does not park an RV there. He has no real estate where he might pitch a tent.
He says when he is in New York, he sometimes stays at hotels. This is not exactly disqualifying, because George H.W. and Barbara Bush claimed Texas residency with a hotel address for years after they left the White House, but there were some differences. The senior Bushes rented a suite at the posh Houstonian Hotel year-round; they had a permanent address. RFK does not have a standing hotel room; he just rents rooms wherever, when he is in town.
RFK claims that he used to rent a room from a friend named David Michaelis from 2014 to 2017, but Michaelis has said this was not true. Michaelis’s wife has said it was somewhat hurtful to be referred to as a “landlord,” when RFK at the time was just an old friend. Apparently RFK is no longer their friend.
RFK is married to actress Cheryl Hines who not only lives in California (she would claim it as her primary residence) but works in Hollywood.
Most people who know RFK identify him as a Californian. He does own a home in swanky Malibu (price tag $5M) and he’s a denizen of Muscle Beach in Venice, California. RFK’s wife, dogs, and his personal belongings are all in California, so Clear Choice PAC is making the case that RFK is Californian, not a New Yorker, and therefore cannot appear on the ballot in New York.
Clear Choice PAC is not suing for financial damages—there are none—they are suing to erase RFK off the ballot in New York.
RFK’s has a response to all this, of course.
He keeps his pet falcons in Goshen, New York. It seems like you can rent accommodations for falcons, like stabling horses. But since his falcons are prized possessions, they’re being domiciled in New York indicates that New York is his home.
He has plans to move permanently to New York once his wife finishes her Curb Your Enthusiasm gig. They’re only in California temporarily because of her work.
RFK pays New York state taxes.
RFK is registered to vote in New York, and said he even owns a home. This may not be as good an argument as it sounds—his voter ID registration address is for a foreclosed property that he once owned. Apparently, RFK failed to make payments. So I guess his argument for NY residency is that he has used a fake address for voting.
So what’s the point of all this haggling and courtroom drama? Even if the Clear Choice PAC can get RFK removed from the ballot in New York, RFK is not going to win the Presidency. Current thinking is that Kamala will win New York, regardless of whether RFK is on the ballot or not. It won’t affect state, let alone national results. So why make a case out of this matter?
A loss in this New York lawsuit might allow certain other states to remove him from the ballot as well. About 18 states are in question, according to lefty publication Mother Jones. Erasing RFK off the ballot in some of those states might actually alter results. In New York, Kamala is predicted right now to win regardless of whether RFK is on the ballot or not. But where the election results are neck-and-neck, getting RFK out of the running could affect the outcome, but no one is 100% sure how. Some say RFK is drawing votes from Trump (due to their “outsider” status), but others say RFK is taking votes from Kamala (due to his left-leaning positions and Democrat family history). It might be different in different states.
The real reason RFK is in court is not to embarrass him (although it might) or to knock him off the ballot in New York or elsewhere (it might). It’s not to saddle him with a bad reputation. It’s lawfare. It’s Soviet-style electioneering and it’s how Biden and the Democrat machine conduct business.
Look no further than what Biden unleashed against Trump. Cook up some strange and bizarre cases and then tie up a candidate in weeks of boring court testimony and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. There is not one Trump lawfare case that will stand up under appeal, but winning was never the point. As Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch says, “the process is the punishment.”
The Democrats have sent the most chilling election messages in American history; if you challenge the Democrats, or, rather, if you challenge the current regime:
You won’t get Secret Service protection at all (RFK)
Or you’ll get compromised and limited Secret Service protection (Trump)
You’ll spend lots of your campaign hours in a court room for bogus stupid charges
You’ll be forced to spend huge amounts of money on lawyers
You’ll be the subject of a media blitz that accuses you of criminality
Tell me how Stalin or Pol Pot or Putin are any different than the Democrats (Putin recently got his main opponent off the ballot nationwide in the recent presidential elections in Russia because of a paperwork error in her filing papers.)
Spoiler alert: Donald Trump has said that Biden has a surprise in store for Kamala at the upcoming Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago. Fireworks start a week from today, Monday, August 19. Are we going to see some Dem vs. Dem warfare? I have no inside information on this and just my own suppositions. I think Trump might be on to something … Biden is the kind of guy who withholds Secret Service protection from political opponents and sics courts on people he can’t fight at the ballot box. He’s not a guy I would trust.