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. 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.

Early life Martin was born in 1945 in Middletown, Connecticut. His father, Ralph Beneducci Martin-Trigona, was of Italian, Maltese, and English descent, and his mother, Helen Anthony , was Greek American. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1966, and a Juris Doctor from that institution in 1969.

Career In 1973, the Illinois Supreme Court refused to grant Martin a license to practice law in the state due to such conduct as attempting to have a parking violation thrown out because it had been "entered by an insane judge" and for commenting that an attorney, who suffers from a mild case of cerebral palsy, was "shaking and tottering and drooling like an idiot." The court also cited Martin's Selective Service record, which attributed to him "a moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character."

Political campaigns Martin grew up as a Democrat and served as an intern to Senator Paul Douglas in the summer of 1966. In 1977, he ran in a special election for Mayor of Chicago, but lost in the Democratic primary to acting mayor Michael A. Bilandic, receiving less than 3% of the vote.

Over the years, Martin has run in various elections in Connecticut, Florida, and Illinois as a Democrat, a Republican, and an independent. Among them: 1977 Chicago mayoral special election (Democratic primary) 1978 United States Senate election in Illinois (Democratic primary) 1980 United States Senate election in Illinois (Democratic primary) Connecticut's 3rd congressional district election, 1986 (Democratic primary) President of the United States, 1988 (Democratic primary) 1990 Florida gubernatorial election (Republican primary) - 4th of five candidates, 28,591 votes (4.30%) U.S. House from Florida, 1992 (Republican primary) Florida State Senate, 1996 (unsuccessful Republican nominee) 2014 United States Senate election in New Hampshire (Republican primary) - 7th of 10 candidates, 734 votes (0.67%) 2016 New Hampshire Republican presidential primary 2018 United States House of Representatives elections in New Hampshire, 1st district (Republican primary) 3rd of 6 candidates, 2,072 (4.2%) 2020 United States Senate election in New Hampshire, (Republican primary), 3rd of 4 candidates, 6,443 votes (4.6%) 2022 United States Senate election in New Hampshire, (Republican primary), 7th of 11 candidates, 920 votes 2024 United States House of Representatives elections in New Hampshire, 1st district (Republican primary)

1996 Martin's 1996 run for the Florida State Senate unraveled when it was revealed that he had named his campaign committee for his 1986 congressional run "The Anthony R. Martin-Trigona Congressional Campaign to Exterminate Jew Power in America." The revelation led the state Republican Party to renounce him.

Just before the election, Martin assaulted two camerapersons from WPTV, the NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach, while they were interviewing him at the TV station. At the trial, he arrived late and used the dais to address the television cameras. He then refused to continue the trial with a judge who had been "bought and paid for". The judge immediately held Martin in criminal contempt of court and ordered him jailed for one month.

On the assault charge, he was convicted of criminal mischief and sentenced to a year in jail. However, when he was let out of jail for the contempt charge after serving one month, he was not re-incarcerated for the assault charge, due to a "paperwork glitch".

Martin never returned to serve out the remainder of his term, and an arrest warrant was issued for his arrest, making him subject to having to serve 16 months in jail.

2000 During Martin's 2000 run for president, he accused George W. Bush of using cocaine. In 2003, several months before Saddam Hussein was captured, Martin claimed to have found the former Iraqi dictator's hideout. In December 2009, Martin ran radio ads which included Martin requesting that one of his primary opponents, Congressman Mark Kirk, answer claims about his sexuality made by Jack Roeser, a radio talk show host. Another ad alleged that Kirk, as well as former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, had always known of fellow Congressman Mark Foley's relationship with a former page, and had done "nothing to stop Foley's pedophilia, for years", and said, that by extension, Kirk was "a de facto pedophile". In response, the state Republican Party announced that Martin would no longer be recognized as a legitimate candidate. Martin received 37,359 votes, five percent of the total votes. He attempted to run for the U.S. Senate in the general election as a member of the Reform Party of Illinois, but he did not qualify for the ballot.

Litigation and antisemitic allegations Over the years, Martin has filed numerous lawsuits, and was labeled as a vexatious litigant by Edward Weinfeld, a federal judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who observed that Martin tended to file "a substantial number of lawsuits of a vexatious, frivolous and scandalous nature." When later pressed in an interview about his remarks, Martin claimed that the antisemitic comments were inserted into his court papers by malicious judges. In his ruling, Cabranes noted that Martin tended to file legal actions with "persistence, viciousness, and general disregard for decency and logic." According to Cabranes, Martin's practice was to file "an incessant stream of frivolous or meritless motions, demands, letters to the court and other documents," as well as "vexatious lawsuits" against anyone who dared cross him, including court personnel and their families. For instance, during the proceedings, Martin sued Cabranes himself, along with the judge's wife. Martin then sought, unsuccessfully, to have Cabranes recused.

On appeal from Cabranes's ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit limited the scope of the injunction to federal courts, but stated that the federal courts were constitutionally obligated to protect themselves and the administration of justice from vexatious litigants like Martin.

Since then, Martin has continued his pattern of filing legal actions. He has repeatedly been cited for contempt for violating the federal injunction. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida estimated that he has filed thousands of proceedings over the years. In 1993, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit determined that his mother was acting in concert with him by filing a federal civil rights action against several Florida state officials. The court noted similar wording in the suit filed by Martin's mother and a petition filed by Martin himself. In throwing out the suit, the Eleventh Circuit called Martin "a notoriously vexatious and vindictive litigator who has long abused the American legal system."

Martin has also been sanctioned at the state level. He is banned from seeking indigent status in Florida courts due to his history of filing abusive petitions. Martin is also prohibited from filing lawsuits in New York, unless represented by an attorney or with the court's prior approval.

In November 2015, Martin filed a challenge to the appearance of Bernie Sanders on the New Hampshire ballot for the Democratic primary. The challenge was unsuccessful, but Martin announced plans to appeal to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

Role in rumors about Obama

Allegations of Obama being a Muslim According to a report by journalist Chris Hayes for The Nation, Martin issued a press release shortly after Obama's keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that he had evidence Obama "lied to the American people" and "misrepresent[ed] his own heritage." Martin claimed that Obama was really a Muslim, was possibly hiding this fact "to endanger Israel," Then, on December 26, conservative activist Ted Sampley, co-founder of Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, posted a column suggesting Obama was a closeted Muslim, heavily quoting Martin's original press release.

According to Hayes, the first of many emails suggesting Obama was a Muslim was forwarded to Snopes within hours of Sampley's story. Hayes believes that the email was likely a slightly altered version of the Sampley article, which was in turn heavily based on Martin's 2004 press release. Martin told Hayes that he got numerous calls once the emails began circulating. When the callers asked him if he wrote the release, Martin replied, "They are all my children."

Then-Fox Senior Vice President Bill Shine later retracted support for Martin as a guest: "Having that guy on was a mistake. We obviously didn't do enough research on who the guest was."

Allegations of Obama's father being Frank Marshall Davis In an interview featured on the CNN network's American Morning program on October 27, 2008, Martin explicitly abandoned his view that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Martin claimed that he discovered this after a recent trip to Honolulu, although he offered CNN no substantive proof for the claim.

The short-form birth certificate that the Obama campaign posted online stated that his date of birth as August 4, 1961, his place of birth as Honolulu, Hawaii, and other details.

Hawaii State Department and Health spokeswoman Janice Okubo stated that only people with a "tangible relationship" to a person can access a copy of the person's birth certificate, adding that a 1949 law "was enacted primarily to protect your private information, especially in these days where there's ID theft."

On April 27, 2011, White House staffers gave reporters a copy of the official long-form certificate, and posted a PDF image of the certificate on the White House website. The certificate reconfirmed the information on the official short-form certificate released in 2008, and provided additional details such as the name of the hospital where Obama was born.