Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger West of the Central District of California told Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones magazine that defending the government from a lawsuit brought by California lawyer/dentist Orly Taitz, a leader in the “birther” movement that believes President Barack Obama was born in another county, has not taken much of his time.
According to Mother Jones:
The case has dragged on for more than a year, mostly because Taitz, a graduate of an online, unaccredited law school, failed to serve the defendants. Judge David O. Carter dismissed the suit in October for a host of reasons, but Taitz has appealed. Yet West says that far from bleeding his office, Taitz and her co-counsel Gary Kreep have assembled such a weak case that he hasn’t had to spend much time on it. “I filed one motion that didn’t take too long, we’ve had two hearings and that’s it,” he says. “It’s not like we’ve devoted some sort of task force to this.”
And, according to Mother Jones, Army Major Rebecca Ausprung, who handled two of the birther cases against the Department of the Army that disputed Obama’s authority as commander in chief, says she spent a few hours drafting motions and doing research. “The monetary cost to the government in defending these two cases was extremely minimal,” she says.
And finally, in another case, dismissed by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, the Federal Election Commission was invited to submit a bill for its expenses in dealing with the case. The bill was $20.40.
