Arpaio reveals findings from Hawaiian investigation

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced that his department’s investigation into the validity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate had concluded that the document is “undoubtedly fraudulent.”

In a press conference, Arpaio’s investigators pointed out several supposed errors in the document, with the focus mainly on vital codes, written in pencil, and their meanings.

According to Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Posse Lead Investigator Mike Zullo, the findings were partially based on an interview with a person whose signature appears on Obama’s birth certificate. That person, Verna K. Lee, 95, said she was a local registrar at the time of Obama’s birth.

A press release from MCSO said the rest of the case was based around several factors, including an in-depth explanation of the process of forging a birth certificate.

The first factor is a coding discrepancy on Obama’s birth certificate when compared to other Hawaiian documents.

Information given by Lee, including the in-question vital codes and their meanings, contrasted the president’s claims.

Investigators were not permitted to compare the White House’s version of Obama’s birth certificate to that held by Hawaii. Officials refused to allow MCSO investigators to make the comparison and also would not confirm if a PDF of the birth certificate, released by the White House, was an exact copy of the document released to Obama’s attorneys.

In addition to the birth certificate investigation, MCSO also alleged that, under a loophole in Hawaiian law, a person can register a foreign-born child and receive an official Hawaiian birth certificate, thus allowing that child to skip the naturalization process.

“Often investigations into one matter lead law enforcement officials to other issues of serious concern,” said Arpaio in the release. “This Hawaiian law may be a serious threat to national security and needs to be immediately addressed by the U.S. government.”

Arpaio said it is possible that Obama benefited from this loophole, but said in the press conference that MCSO is not accusing him of any crime. Instead, the agency wants to bring whomever forged the documents to justice.

“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,” said Arpaio.

Arpaio’s investigation into Obama’s birth certificate began in October of 2011, when about 250 county citizens requested that he look into the matter. Six months later, Arpaio said that his agency suspected that the birth certificate, along with Obama’s Selective Service card, were forgeries.