Arpaio calls for federal inquiry into Obama's birth certificate

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his Cold Case Posse on Tuesday announced that their long-running investigation had found the long-form birth certificate released by President Barack Obama was "undoubtedly fraudulent."

“Through the hard work of Mike Zullo and his team of investigators we have pointed out some inconsistencies, or oddities, relating to the President’s birth certificate. Taken one by one they may not be terribly concerning. But put them altogether and they paint a picture of deception that requires a federal inquiry,” Arpaio said.

“My hope is that the U.S. Congress will take over from here if not to further the birth certificate forgery possibility, then at least to examine the state of Hawaii’s laws in regards to the issuance of birth certificates which may be permitting untold numbers of foreign born people to wrongly gain U.S. citizenship."

Mike Zullo, the posse's chief investigator and author of so-called "birther" books, said that after a trip to Hawaii the investigators found that coding numbers seen on the President’s birth certificate were not consistent with the coding required by the federal government.

Zullo also said Hawaii Assistant Attorney General Jill Nagamine had refused to cooperate with the investigation, suggesting there was a cover up. Nagamine refused to give the sheriff’s investigators permission to see the original birth documents held by the Hawaii Department of Health. Emails obtained by Talking Points Memo show that Hawaii officials questioned their legal authority to investigate the matter.

Obama has been dogged by questions about his eligibility to serve as President of the United States since 2008. Many of the so-called “birthers” believe Obama was born in Kenya in 1961 and that his birth certificate was faked in order to make him eligible for the presidency.

In an attempt to quiet the “birther” conspiracies, Obama released his long-form birth certificate last year. It confirmed what his other birth certificate released in 2008 said: the president was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961.

Other "birthers" have argued that Obama is not a “natural born citizen” because his father was a British subject. But those claims are contradicted by a Congressional Research Service report on the subject. Courts have ruled that anyone born within the borders of the United States was legally a “natural born citizen” under the U.S. Constitution, regardless of the citizenship of their parents.

Hawaii officials have insisted the birth certificate released by Obama is authentic.

"I have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawai‘i State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen," Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, said in 2009.

Watch video, courtesy of CNN, below:

[Image via Gage Skidmore]