A Trump campaign adviser on Thursday promoted a racist conspiracy theory that falsely claims that Harris may not be a U.S. citizen, a move the Biden campaign denounced as “abhorrent.”Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign, retweeted a Newsweek op-ed written by John C. Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University in California and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. The 14th Amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Legal scholars have widely interpreted that to mean that anyone born on U.S. soil automatically becomes a natural-born citizen. “It’s an open question, and one I think Harris should answer so the American people know for sure she is eligible,” Ellis said in an email. “Just like Biden should also answer questions about his mental competency.”Ellis also rejected the notion that questioning Harris’s citizenship is racist. Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesman, condemned Ellis’s decision to promote the conspiracy theory surrounding Harris’s eligibility in a statement Thursday.

Source: Washington Post August 13, 2020 10:42 UTC