Sheriff Arpaio refuses to drop 'birther' investigation of Obama

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio told The Arizona Republic on Sunday that he would continue to pursue his investigation into President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

“I’m not going to drop this,” he told the newspaper. “You don’t think I did a press conference and let it die? I’ll make a decision real quick where to send the evidence we have. There are not many options. You do know this is complex. Many conflicts of interest from the White House to the Attorney General. I can go on and on.”

Arpaio announced on March 1 that his six-month investigation into Obama’s birth certificate concluded the document was most likely a “forgery.”

“President Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate released by the White House on April 27, 2011, is suspected to be a computer-generated forgery, not a scan of an original 1961 paper document as represented by the White House when the long-form birth certificate was made public,” the sheriff said at a press conference.

But his widely-reported investigation had little impact.

“The media all came to make fun of me,” Arpaio told The Arizona Republic. “I'm a little concerned that all of their questions were zeroed in on credibility and that this has been rehashed. They didn't even ask about the proof of the case. They didn't ask about the facts that we had.”

Many of the so-called “birthers” believe there is persuasive evidence that 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 conspiracies, Obama released his long-form birth certificate in late April. It confirmed what his other birth certificate released in 2008 said: the president was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961.

Judges around the nation have consistently dismissed "birther" lawsuits against Obama's right to be president as frivolous.

[Image via Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com]

With prior reporting by David Edwards