Sheriff Joe Arpaio has released the results of his investigation into the validity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Conclusion: Definitely a fraud.
“At the very least, I can tell you this, based on all of the evidence presented and investigated, I cannot in good faith report to you that these documents are authentic,” Arpaio said at a news conference yesterday. “My investigators believe that the long-form birth certificate was manufactured electronically and that it did not originate in a paper format as claimed by the White House.”
Arpaio formed what he called a “posse” to investigate whether Obama was really born in Hawaii. Mike Zullo, the posse’s chief investigator, said Tuesday he listened in on a writer’s interview with the now-95-year-old woman who signed Obama’s birth certificate. She allegedly said codes on some parts of the birth certificate indicated that information about Obama’s father was left blank although those sections were completed.
The Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff is being sued by the Obama Justice Department for civil rights violations, including forcing inmates to wear pink underwear and running all-female chain gangs, the New York Daily News notes.
He’s become a darling of conservatives, who’ve helped him raise several million dollars for his re-election campaign. (His closest rival has raised $6,000). So-called “birthers” such as Arpaio don’t believe the president was born in Hawaii, as he’s always said, and as state records confirm. They believe he was born overseas, perhaps in Kenya, the country of his father.
Obama released his long-form birth certificate last year to put to rest the conspiracy theories, to no avail.
“President Obama was born in Honolulu and his birth certificate is valid,” Joshua A. Wisch, a special assistant to Hawaii’s attorney general, said in a statement, according to the Associated Press. “Regarding the latest allegations from a sheriff in Arizona, they are untrue, misinformed, and misconstrue Hawaii law.”
