Media Clings to “Born in Hawaii” When Faced with Forgery Claim

OR “BORN IN THE U.S.”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jan. 11, 2018) — As has occurred since 2012, mainstream media outlets continue to conflate the distinct issues of the forgery of Barack Hussein Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate and where the subject of the forgery might have taken his first breath.

Since his declaration on Tuesday that he will seek the U.S. Senate seat to be vacated by junior Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake early next year, media interviews of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio and accompanying print articles invariably stress that “Obama was born in Hawaii” as a result of Arpaio’s five-year investigation into Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate posted on the White House website on April 27, 2011.

Concerned with analysts’ reports that the image is fraudulent, four months later, more than 200 of Arpaio’s constituents expressed concern through a petition that their votes would be disenfranchised in the 2012 presidential election and requested an inquiry through the sheriff’s office.

Arpaio agreed and commissioned what he believed would be a brief probe into the image to set his constituents minds at ease and “clear the president.”  One of many volunteer groups assisting Arpaio’s office, the “Cold Case Posse,” consisting of former law enforcement professionals and led by former New Jersey detective Mike Zullo, performed a perfunctory examination of the image and found that it was fraught with anomalies.

The investigation therefore continued, ultimately lasting more than five years, during which the media ridiculed the messengers and showed no curiosity over how an abject forgery of a sitting president’s birth record came to be created uploaded to the administration’s official website and presented to the American people as authentic.

On March 1, 2012, Zullo spoke at a press conference during which he declared that probable cause had been found by investigators to declare the long-form image a “computer-generated forgery.”

Also found fraudulent was Obama’s Selective Service registration form, about which the Selective Service System (SSS) appeared to have no concern.  “…if you have any credible evidence to the contrary and believe that a Federal crime has been committed, we suggest that it be turned over immediately to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to pursue,” wrote then-SSS associate director of public & intergovernmental affairs Richard S. Flavahan.

However, the FBI showed no interest in the findings of forgery and fraud.  On July 18, 2012, a day after a second presser on the matter was held which revealed more details and stated the hurdle of probable cause cleared, this writer spoke to an FBI media representative who told us that he personally viewed the entire press conference and advised anyone concerned that a crime had been committed to “contact your congressman.”

The FBI was then led by Robert S. Mueller, III, who is now “Special Counsel” for the dual “Russia” investigations, coming under fire in recent months by some congressional Republicans for having assembled a team of what appear to be anti-Trump individuals.

Obama chose Mueller’s successor, James B. Comey, in 2013.  Last May, Trump fired Comey to much uproar among congressional Demcrats, many of whom had called for Comey’s ouster after he announced in late October 2016 that he had reopened the agency’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was Obama’s secretary of state.

In early August, Trump’s pick for FBI director, Christopher Wray, was approved by the Senate.

The crime of the forgery of the Obama long-form certificate has never been probed by a congressional committee, the FBI or the DOJ to anyone’s knowledge.

In October, Trump’s DOJ indicated that it would interview any FBI agents who had taken part in the “Uranium One” probe involving Hillary Clinton and the sale of 20% of U.S. uranium reserves to Russia.

Another investigation will reportedly focus on the Clinton Foundation.

Clinton’s use of a private email server will also reportedly be re-examined after Comey declared on July 5, 2016 that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring this case” because Clinton showed no “intent” to break the law.  “We did our investigation the right way,” Comey added in an unprecedented press conference in which he appeared to assign himself the role of DOJ and FBI spokesman as well as judge and jury.

On Thursday, Sara Carter reported on her website that the now-infamous FBI “Trump dossier” “was used as evidence by the FBI to gain approval from a secret court to monitor members of Trump’s team.”  Carter additionally reported that commentator Sean Hannity said on his Wednesday radio show that he had verified that to be the case with three sources.  The dossier was procured by FusionGPS with financial assistance from Perkins Coie, a law firm which represents not only the DNC, but had also represented Obama in legal challenges pertaining to his eligibility for the presidency and in procuring two certified copies of his original birth certificate.

Penalties for forgery of a government document vary widely.  While some instances of forgery are misdemeanors, others are felonies.

The forgery of a U.S. passport brings with it a sentence of 10-15 years in prison if terrorism or drug trafficking are not involved.

The crime of “uttering a forged instrument” involves proffering the forgery as genuine with the knowledge that it is not, according to U.S. Legal.  The actual creation of the forgery can be considered a separate crime, as it is in the state of New Jersey.

In October 2004, the former deputy registrar of the Hudson County, NJ Office of Vital Statistics was convicted of participating in a scheme to plant false birth certificates in official records which were provided to a foreign-born man with three foreign-born children “to obtain U.S. passports, which they used to travel internationally,” according to the news release.

The FBI and Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) were credited with carrying out the investigation.

According to criminaldefenselawyer.com, “Our society relies heavily on the ability to produce and exchange legitimate and trustworthy documents. Forged documents can have serious and far-reaching negative consequences on businesses, individuals, and political entities. This is why forgery is punished harshly.”

“The good news is we know he [Obama] was [born in the U.S.],” CNN’s Chris Cuomo had told Arpaio during the interview.

On Wednesday, reporting on the Cuomo interview, Arizona’s ABC15’s closing statement was that “Obama was born in Hawaii.”

On Thursday, Circa.com reported that “the notion that Obama has a fake birth certificate and was born outside the U.S. has been widely debunked by media reports,” citing no such reports or the Arpaio/Zullo investigation.

Last March, Politico reported that “the former president…was born in Hawaii.”

Many in the media have conflated the status of “U.S. citizen” with the “natural born Citizen” requirement found only for the chief executive in Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution.

A congressional resolution dated July 27, 2009 states, without proof, that “Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961.”  The measure was sponsored by former U.S. Congressman and former Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who Zullo has identified as being a key player in promoting the narrative connecting Obama to the Aloha State by birth.

“They had to manufacture a long-form,” Zullo told The Post & Email in an interview last month.

The Obama White House stated that “With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961.”

On September 16, 2016, PBS crowed that Trump was “mistaken” when he previously “refused to acknowledge Obama was born in Hawaii” until he did so in a presser that day.

Arpaio has stressed in virtually every media interview in which he has appeared that he “doesn’t care” where Obama was born because the investigation focused on “a phony document.”