Investigators for an Arizona sheriff’s volunteer posse have declared that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is definitely fraudulent.
Members of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s posse said in March that there was probable cause that Obama’s long-form birth certificate released by the White House in April 2011 was a computer-generated forgery.
Now, Arpaio says investigators are positive it’s fraudulent.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday he suspects the birth certificate President Obama released last year is a “computer-generated forgery” — and also raised questions about the authenticity of the president’s Selective Service card.
“Based on all of the evidence presented and investigated, I cannot in good faith report to you that these documents are authentic,” Sheriff Arpaio said. “My investigators believe that the long-form birth certificate was manufactured electronically and that it did not originate in paper format as claimed by the White House.”
Questions over Mr. Obama’s birth certificate have been a political sideshow for the last four years, and have persisted despite repeated denials by the White House, and despite the release of evidence he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961. That evidence included both a certificate of live birth released during the 2008 campaign and the long-form certificate last year.
Fact-check organizations have concluded the certificates are authentic, and Mr. Obama has joked about those who questioned his birth. At last year’s White House Correspondents Association Dinner, soon after releasing his long-form certificate, he mocked Donald Trump, who had said his own investigators were looking into the matter.
Now Sheriff Arpaio, who first built his national profile by creating tent cities for jail inmates and later by taking a tough stance on illegal immigration, could reignite questions among those who continue to believe Mr. Obama was born outside the U.S., and therefore is ineligible to be president under the Constitution’s provision that the officeholder be a natural-born citizen.
