David Keanu Sai v. Barack Obama, et al.

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Dr. David Keanu Sai is interviewed by Dr. Lynette Cruz of Hawai`i Pacific University on her show "Issues that Matter" about the Federal lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C.

KANE`OHE, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, JUNE 1, 2010 — Dr. David Keanu Sai, a national of the Hawaiian Kingdom, filed a complaint in U.S. District Court, Washington, D.C., against President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, Secretary of Defense Gates, Pacific Command Commander Admiral Willard and State of Hawai`i Governor Lingle. The civil case was assigned no. 1:10-CV-00899CKK. This case arises under the Alien Tort Statute and the Plaintiff filed the suit as a Hawaiian subject for injuries suffered when he was wrongfully convicted of a so-called felony by the State of Hawai`i in violation of an Executive Agreement dated January 17, 1893, referred to as the Lili`uokalani assignment. The Lili`uokalani assignment legally bound President Cleveland and his successors in office, to include President Obama, to administer Hawaiian Kingdom law, not U.S. law, by virtue of a temporary and conditional assignment of Hawaiian executive power by Queen Lili`uokalani made under a threat of war by U.S. forces that illegally landed on Hawaiian territory. This temporary and conditional assignment of Hawaiian executive power remains today in the office of the U.S. President. The Plaintiff is seeking a declaratory judgment by the Court declaring the 1898 Joint Resolution to provide for annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States (30 U.S. Stat. 750) to be unconstitutional under U.S. law as well as a violation of Hawaiian sovereignty, and is also seeking permanent injunctive relief, redress, restitution, disgorgement, and other equitable relief against Defendants, which includes the State of Hawai`i, for violations of the Lili`uokalani assignment and other treaties that the United States government has ratified.

JULY 15, 2010 — Plaintiff filed an Amended Complaint with the Federal Court in Washington, D.C. removing President Obama as one of the Defendants but all other Defendants remained. In Fitzgerald v. Nixon (1982) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the President has complete immunity from civil lawsuits. Rule 24 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allows the Plaintiff to amend the complaint without permission from the Court if there was no response filed by the Defendants with the Court beforehand. Although President Obama was removed as a Defendant, the case is still referred to as Sai v. Obama, et al.

JULY 30, 2010 — Assistant U.S. Attorney Christian Natiello for Washington, D.C., contacted the Plaintiff and requested an additional 30 days to respond to the Amended Complaint he received on July 26, 2010. Consent for the request was given. The initial 60 days began when the U.S. Attorney received the Summons and the initial Complaint on June 14, 2010, which now gives the U.S. Attorney 90 days to file an answer with the U.S. District Court. An answer to the Amended Complaint should be expected no later than mid-September.

UPDATE: AUGUST 26, 2010 — State of Hawai`i Attorney General, on behalf of Defendant Lingle, files a Motion to Dismiss. The Motion, as well as all court filings, can be downloaded in PDF below under the heading "Court Docket Filings."

NEW: Six short videos uploaded on Vimeo that cover sections of the Federal Complaint in chronological order from 1840 to the present.

Court Docket Filings

Dr. Sai has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Hawai`i at Manoa specializing in international relations and public law, with particular emphasis on the legal and political history of the Hawaiian Kingdom. His doctoral dissertation is titled "The American Occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom: Beginning the Transition from Occupied to Restored State." Dr. Sai also served as lead agent in international arbitration proceedings (Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom) at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, Netherlands (1999-2001); filed a Complaint with the United Nations Security Council on July 5, 2001; and has numerous articles on the legal status of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a sovereign and independent State.

In the Federal complaint filed today, Dr. Sai alleges the violation of an executive agreement entered into between Queen Lili`uokalani of the Hawaiian Kingdom and President Grover Cleveland of the United States in 1893, whereby Hawaiian executive power was temporarily and conditionally assigned to the President to administer Hawaiian Kingdom law throughout the Hawaiian Islands. This executive agreement, known as the Lili`uokalani assignment (January 17, 1893), was assigned under threat of war, and binds President Cleveland's successors in office in the administration of Hawaiian Kingdom law until such time as the Hawaiian Kingdom government has been restored in accordance with a second executive agreement between the Queen and President, known as the Agreement of restoration (December 18, 1893), whereupon the executive power would be returned and the Hawaiian Kingdom would grant amnesty to those individuals who participated or supported the 1893 insurrection.

In U.S. v. Belmont (1937), the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that executive agreements entered into between the President and a sovereign nation does not require ratification from the U.S. Senate to have the force and effect of a treaty; and executive agreements bind successor Presidents for their faithful execution. Other landmark cases on executive agreements are U.S. v. Pink (1942) and American Insurance Association v. Garamendi (2003). In Garamendi, the Court stated, "Specifically, the President has authority to make 'executive agreements' with other countries, requiring no ratification by the Senate or approval by Congress." Dr. Sai alleges that President Barack Obama, being the successor in office to President Cleveland, is legally bound to administer the laws of the Hawaiian Kingdom until the Hawaiian Kingdom government is restored in accordance with the Agreement of restoration.

The suit was filed under Title 28, United States Code, §1350, "Alien's action for tort," for maliciously prosecuting and convicting Dr. Sai for complying with Hawaiian Kingdom law, whereby the prosecution and conviction were violations of the Lili`uokalani assignment; the 1907 Hague Convention, IV; and the 1949 Geneva Convention, IV. §1350 provides that "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."

In the complaint, it states that the Hawaiian Kingdom became a full member of the Universal Postal Union in 1882, and currently has treaties with Austria-Hungary (June 18, 1875), now Austria and Hungary; Belgium (October 4, 1862); Bremen (March 27, 1854) now Germany; Denmark (Oct. 19, 1846); France (September 8, 1858); French Tahiti (November 24, 1853); Germany (March 25, 1879); Great Britain (March 26, 1846); Great Britain's New South Wales (March 10, 1874), now Australia; Hamburg (January 8, 1848), now Germany; Italy (July 22, 1863); Japan (Aug. 19, 1871, January 28, 1886); Netherlands (October 16, 1862); Portugal (May 5, 1882); Russia (June 19, 1869); Samoa (March 20, 1887); Spain (October 9, 1863); Sweden and Norway (April 5, 1855), now separate States; Switzerland (July 20, 1864); and the United States of America (December 20, 1849).

On July 7, 1898, the United States unilaterally annexed the Hawaiian Islands for military purposes by enacting a joint resolution of annexation through its Congress over protests by the Queen and political organizations representing the people of Hawai`i that was filed with the U.S. State Department in the summer of 1897, and a 21,269 signature petition protesting annexation that was also filed with the U.S. Senate on December 9, 1897 by Senator George Hoar (R-MA). On August 12, 1898, the Hawaiian Kingdom was occupied during the Spanish-American War and the Hawaiian Kingdom has since been under prolonged occupation under the guise of a U.S. territory. Presently, Hawai`i serves as headquarters for the largest U.S. Unified Combatant Command in the world, the U.S. Pacific Command, which controls 20.6% of lands (nearly 200,000 acres) throughout the islands under troop commands of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. The complaint alleges that the U.S. military's presence has been and continues to be a violation of the Hawaiian Kingdom's status as a Neutral State under international law and the laws of occupation.

According to the complaint, the United States misrepresented Hawai`i to be a part of the United States since the Spanish-American War by enacting Congressional laws claiming to have annexed the Hawaiian Islands in 1898; to have established the Territory of Hawaii in 1900; and to have transformed the Territory of Hawai`i into the State of Hawai`i in 1959. The complaint alleges that these actions by the Congress are in direct violation of the 1893 executive agreements, and that the Congress has no force and effect beyond U.S. territory.

In a 1988 U.S. Department of Justice legal opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel, acting Assistant Attorney General Douglas Kmiec stated, "It is unclear which constitutional power Congress exercised when it acquired Hawaii by joint resolution. Accordingly, it is doubtful that the acquisition of Hawaii can serve as an appropriate precedent for a congressional assertion of sovereignty over an extended territorial sea." According to Dr. Sai, "The U.S. Congress could no more annex the Hawaiian Islands in 1898 by passing a joint resolution when it was at war with Spain, than it could annex Afghanistan today by passing a joint resolution while fighting the war on terrorism. U.S. laws do not have extraterritorial force and are limited and confined to U.S. territory. Only through a treaty of cession with the Hawaiian Kingdom could Hawai`i's territorial sovereignty be ceded or transferred to the United States, the 1893 executive agreements and other international treaties being superseded, and only thereafter could Congressional laws be legally enforced throughout the Hawaiian Islands without violating international law."

Among the alleged misrepresentations that the United States made to the international community:

That the sovereignty of the Hawaiian Islands was lawfully ceded to the United States by a treaty of cession in 1898;
That the international treaties between the Hawaiian Kingdom and other sovereign States were superseded by the United States' treaties with those States;
That United States laws and not Hawaiian Kingdom laws governed the Hawaiian Islands to include taxation, tariffs and duties; and
That the Hawaiian Islands is the territory of the United States through the State of Hawai`i and not the Hawaiian Kingdom, being a sovereign State, which has been under prolonged occupation since the Spanish-American War.

Dr. Sai's complaint alleges Obama, Clinton, Gates, Willard and Lingle with violating the Lili`uokalani assignment, the 1907 Hague Convention, IV, the 1949 Geneva Convention, IV, and for allowing the State of Hawai`i to have maliciously indicted, prosecuted and convicted Dr. Sai of a manufactured felony count of attempted theft of real property on March 7, 2000 for adhering to Hawaiian Kingdom laws, which by definition constitutes a "war crime" under Title 18 U.S.C. §2441(c)(1). The complaint seeks a permanent injunction, including punitive damages, disgorgement and restitution, to prevent and remedy any violations of the Lili`uokalani assignment and the international laws of occupation.

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For more information about this law suit, contact:

Dr. Keanu Sai at: 808-383-6100 or email:

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