Phoenix Fox Station: Fox News Channel Watched Last Month’s Birth Certificate Presser

THEN WHY THE SILENCE?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jan. 28, 2017) — A live video feed from Channel 10, a Phoenix Fox affiliate, posted by a Reddit user who is also a Trump supporter shows two reporters discussing the final Obama birth certificate press conference scheduled to begin within a matter of minutes.

The presser took place in Phoenix on Thursday, December 15, 2016, and was reportedly well-attended by local media.  During the 66-minute presentation, Mike Zullo, who led the five-year probe, revealed that two forensics experts had studied the long-form birth certificate image posted at whitehouse.gov and agreed that “nine points of forgery” precluded it from being authentic.

At an initial press conference on March 1, 2012, Zullo and then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio declared the image a “computer-generated forgery,”after which a majority of broadcast media failed to run reports on the issue.

Likewise, no media outlet launched its own investigation to prove or disprove investigators’ findings, even after Arpaio declared the matter of the forgery one of “national security” and called upon Congress to launch a probe.  Despite the evidence of a crime and its ramifications, a media and congressional blackout was maintained, propelling Obama to a second term in the White House without his having to produce any verifiable identity documents.

At the opening of the video posted on Reddit, reporters Samia Khan and Marc Martinez speculate as to why Arpaio was holding the December 15 presser given Arpaio’s imminent departure from the sheriff’s office resulting from his defeat in the November 8 election.

Martinez suggested that Arpaio enjoyed the media spotlight and noted a significant media presence to cover the press conference.

At approximately the 2:48 mark, Martinez told Khan, “We also know this is being picked up by Fox News Channel.  They’re watching this as well, so this is going national whatever we’re going to find out…”

Martinez later tweeted a summation of the presser along with reporter Danielle Miller.

Fox News Channel was silent about the press conference.  On January 2, an oblique reference was made to the five-year investigation’s conclusions by “Special Report” host Bret Baier, who mistakenly referred to Arpaio as the “Metro Phoenix sheriff,” the fact that he had left office, and the “criminal charges” he faced from the U.S. Department of Justice stemming from a racial-profiling lawsuit.

Baier then stated that Arpaio’s investigation found the long-form birth certificate image to be fraudulent but that the White House had countered by calling the claim “ridiculous.”

A video of the broadcast has been removed from YouTube.

Media are aware that if Obama is not a “natural born Citizen,” as the U.S.  Constitution requires for the president and commander-in-chief of the nation’s military, there could be grave consequences.

Neither Obama nor his spokesman ever provided a response to the claims made by Arpaio and Zullo since early 2012 that the birth certificate is a forgery.

On January 11, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest unexpectedly referenced the questions about Obama’s birthplace and documentation which persisted throughout his eight-year occupation of the White House.

Calling the incoming Trump administration “not transparent,” Earnest said:

There were a wide variety of the president’s critics who were suggesting and propagating conspiracy theories that somehow the president was not born in the United States.

All of you could look at that piece of paper and verify for yourself to be convinced that the charges against the president — that were lobbed against the president — were false.

The incoming administration has chosen a different approach. They’ve not been transparent.

Fox News Channel, too, has “not been transparent” in its blackout of the birth certificate forgery.  After the first presser on March 1, 2012, Zullo was scheduled to appear on “Hannity” but was canceled shortly before airtime.

Fox ignored a second press conference on July 17, 2012 after which Arpaio called for a congressional investigation.  Over the years, Fox stifled any on-air discussion of Obama’s background while tolerating “The Five” co-host Greg Gutfeld’s jocose statements on the issue from time to time.