Associated
Press: PHOENIX: Investigators for an Arizona sheriff's volunteer
posse say 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.
So-called "birthers" maintain
Obama is ineligible to be president because, they contend, he
was born in Kenya. However, Hawaii officials have repeatedly
verified Obama's citizenship, and courts have rebuffed lawsuits
over the issue.
Mike Zullo, the Arizona posse's
chief investigator, said numeric codes on parts of the long-form
birth certificate indicate those parts weren't filled out, yet
those sections asking for the race of Obama's father and his
field of work or study were completed.
Zullo said investigators
previously didn't know the meaning of the codes but they were
explained by a 95-year-old former state worker who signed the
president's birth certificate. Zullo said a writer who published
a book about Obama's birth certificate and was aiding
investigators let them listen to an interview he conducted with
the former state worker.
The Arizona Democratic Party said
in a statement that Arpaio's investigation is intended to draw
attention away from problems within his own agency, such as
hundreds of sex-crime cases that the sheriff's office failed to
adequately investigate over a three-year period.
A civil trial is set to begin
Thursday in a lawsuit that accuses Arpaio's office of racially
profiling Latinos. The suit filed by a handful of Latinos will
serve as a precursor to the U.S. Justice Department's lawsuit
that alleges a broader range of civil rights violations against
Arpaio's office.
Obama released a copy of his
long-form birth certificate in an attempt to quell citizenship
questions. His campaign declined to comment on Arpaio's
allegations.
But Joshua A. Wisch, a special
assistant to Hawaii's attorney general, said his state's vital
records are some of the best-managed and have "some of the
strongest restrictions on access to prevent identity theft and
fraud."
"President Obama was born in Honolulu, and his birth certificate
is valid," Wisch said in a statement. "Regarding the latest
allegations from a sheriff in Arizona, they are untrue,
misinformed, and misconstrue Hawaii law."
