“IT’S A FRAUDULENT DOCUMENT”
by Sharon Rondeau
(Dec. 20, 2015) — On today’s MSNBC show, Politics Nation, hosted by Al Sharpton on Sunday mornings at 8:00 a.m. ET, Sharpton spoke with Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio on the topics of illegal and refugee immigration and the investigation Arpaio launched in September 2011 into the long-form birth certificate of Barack Hussein Obama.
Sharpton has been involved for decades in “community activism” and is a published author and radio host. He has also served as a “key adviser” to Obama on “race issues,” including following the shooting of a black teenager, Michael Brown, by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, MO in August of last year.
Rioting, burning, looting, injuries and murder ensued, reigniting after the St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict Wilson on criminal charges in Brown’s death in November 2014.
According to The New York Post, “While in Ferguson, Sharpton met with the Brown family and reported back directly to Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s closest aides.”
During Sharpton’s six-minute interview with Arpaio, Sharpton noted that Arpaio’s office in 2013 was found to have practiced racial profiling in a reference to Melendres, et al v. Arpaio, et al, presided over by U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow, about which The Post & Email has reported regularly over the last several months.
Sharpton recounted that Arpaio outfits his jail inmates in pink underwear and houses many of them in “tent cities,” noting that temperatures in the area often reach “over 110 degrees.”
“I myself have had public battles with the sheriff over the issue,” Sharpton told his audience during his introduction. He termed Arpaio “a polarizing figure for decades known for aggressive immigration policies.”
Arpaio responded that in regard to immigration, because presidential candidate Donald Trump has raised the issue publicly, “now everybody’s talking about it.”
Sharpton first asked Arpaio about his views on Trump’s outspokenness on the issue and whether or not Arpaio’s views are now “mainstream in the GOP.”
Sharpton noted that Arpaio introduced Trump at a campaign rally held in Mesa, AZ on Wednesday, showing a video clip of Arpaio’s remarks, which included that Trump is willing to raise issues when other people “don’t have the guts politically to say it.”
Sharpton pointed out that during Arpaio’s introduction of Trump, he invoked “one of Trump’s signature issues: ‘birther’ conspiracy theories about President Obama.”
Since 2008, anyone doubting that Obama was born in Hawaii, as he claims, has been called a “birther” or “a racist,” a term which Sharpton did not mention.
In early 2011, as Trump deliberated over whether or not to challenge Obama in the 2012 election, he called upon Obama to release his “long-form” birth certificate which would presumably contain the hospital of his birth, a registrar’s signature or official stamp, and the name of the delivery doctor.
On April 8, 2011, Trump held a meeting in his New York office on the birth certificate issue during which Arizona resident Jeff Lichter heard Trump predict that the White House would soon release a forgery, presumably as a result of Trump’s public pressure.
On April 27, 2011, the White House published what it said was a scan of a certified copy of Obama’s long-form birth certificate obtained from then-Hawaii Department of Health Director Loretta Fuddy by special arrangement. The image was immediately condemned by a number of graphics and computer experts as an obvious forgery.
In September 2011, Arpaio commissioned the Cold Case Posse associated with his office to investigate the image after he was approached by approximately 250 concerned constituents the previous month. Now into its fifth year, the investigation has not been widely reported by the mainstream media despite Arpaio and lead investigator Mike Zullo’s having given two press conferences in 2012 detailing how the conclusions of forgery were reached and issuing a plea to Congress to launch its own probe.
Neither the mainstream media nor Congress has investigated the crime, which the posse also found extends to Obama’s Selective Service registration form.
At 4:07 in the interview, Sharpton asked Arpaio, “Are you and Trump still on this ‘birther’ thing? I mean, do you really believe the president of the United States was not born in Hawaii?” to which Arpaio responded, “I don’t care where he was born; I said that from Day One. I said that it’s a fraudulent document…If you had a fake document, you’d be in jail tomorrow.”
Sharpton then asked, “Why hasn’t anybody been able to establish that it’s a fake document?” to which Arpaio replied, “We established it, but nobody wants to look at it. They avoid it. And I’ve had two major press conferences two, three years ago. Nobody will look at it; they don’t even want to hear about it. The only reason I mentioned Trump is the fact he brought this out a long time ago; he was the only one that talked about it. Nobody wants to talk about it, Al.”
Sharpton then turned the conversation back to immigration, which Arpaio said is now amplified by the recent terrorist attack in San Bernardino, CA, which killed 14 people and injured 22 others.
Arpaio and Sharpton wished one another well for the holidays, and the interview concluded.
Arpaio, 83, is serving his sixth consecutive term as Maricopa County Sheriff and plans to run again in 2016. He and Trump coincidentally share the same birthday of June 14.
In an interview with radio host and former U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller earlier this year, Arpaio said that Obama is “likely not qualified to work at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.”