Obama Birth Certificate, Origins Continue to Pique Readers’ Interest

BIRTHPLACE, BIRTH CERTIFICATES:  WHAT ARE THE FACTS?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Sep. 21, 2019) — Questions about Barack Hussein Obama II’s birthplace again came to the fore last week when The Post & Email noted that a reader with an Associated Press IP read our article of October 14, 2009 by John Charlton titled, “AP declares Obama ‘Kenyan-Born’!”

Charlton was referencing an article at The (Kenya) Sunday Standard dated June 27, 2004 titled, “Kenyan-Born Obama All Set for US Senate” which reported that Obama’s then-Republican opponent for the Illinois U.S. Senate seat, Jack Ryan, abandoned his candidacy due to a scandal resulting from the release, instigated by The Chicago Tribune, of previously-private divorce documents.

At the bottom of that article is the notation “—AP,” indicating that it was sourced to the Associated Press.

Article I of the U.S. Constitution permits foreign-born or otherwise naturalized American citizens to run for both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate provided they meet the residency and citizenship requirements for either chamber, both of which are less than ten years. However, the requirements of the president and commander-in-chief as set forth in Article II are that only a “natural born Citizen” may serve, that he or she must be at least 35 years old and have resided in the United States for 14 years.

The Framers did not define the term “natural born Citizen,” and much controversy has arisen over the decades, and even centuries, over its exact meaning.

Some readers quickly indicated their belief that the Associated Press did not actually write the Standard article, echoing a post at Snopes.com which claimed that The Standard‘s story was “a reproduction of” an AP article of June 25, 2004 by Maura Kelly Lannan.

As The Post & Email reported, a comparison of the Standard and AP articles about Ryan shows that The Standard used one paragraph verbatim in which Ryan was quoted on his decision to leave the race as well as part of another passage to which The Standard added different information.

Neither the AP nor The Standard responded to our request for comment about the June 2007 article(s).

Beginning in 2008, The Standard reported Obama as having been born in Hawaii of a father who was born in Kenya.

The website defiantamerica.com has documented archived web pages from Obama’s first literary agent showing that its printed biography of Obama indicated, between 1991 and April 21, 2007, that Obama was “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago.” The story was first broken by Breitbart News on May 17, 2012.

On the latter date, the entry was changed to read:

BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Hawaii to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.

According to Obama’s life story, he did not arrive in Chicago until after he graduated from Harvard Law School.

In December 2007, Obama supporter and MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews declared Obama “born in Indonesia” and possessing “an Islamic background.”  Later on, Matthews would become one of the most vocal defenders of Obama’s “born-in-Hawaii” claim.

At least one source continues to state that Obama was born in Kenya while discussing his connection to Indonesia often-told by U.S. mainstream media:  that he spent four years between the ages of 6 and 10 in Jakarta with his mother and stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, and that his half-sister, Maya, was born there.

Oddly, Obama’s 2008 campaign spokesman, Robert Gibbs, told the media in late October that year that Obama was raised solely in Hawaii by his maternal grandmother, who at that time was said to be terminally ill. Gibbs’s claim was widely reported by the mainstream media but its inconsistency with Obama’s life narrative apparently never questioned.

It was Gibbs who in May 2009 claimed to have played a role in releasing a “short-form” birth certificate image in June 2008 purported to be the only birth document available to those born in Hawaii after a policy change.  However, on April 27, 2011, after then-businessman Donald Trump publicly called for Obama to prove he was born in the United States and presumably eligible to serve as president, the White House released what it said was a PDF of a certified copy of Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate acquired from the Hawaii Department of Health (HDOH).

Amid experts’ assessments that the image contained anomalies and was inauthentic, then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio authorized what he believed would be a short-term probe of the image, delegated to his “Cold Case Posse” led by former detective Mike Zullo.

What Arpaio believed would shortly “clear the president” became a 5+-year investigation concluding in December 2016.  At an initial press conference held on March 1, 2012, Zullo announced that probable cause had been found to believe that the long-form birth certificate image is a “computer-generated forgery” and that Obama’s purported Selective Service registration form also was fabricated.

One of Zullo’s discoveries was that obtaining a birth certificate in Hawaii was not difficult for foreign-born children during the 1960s.  At the time, the law allowed the generation of a birth certificate to a child reported by a relative, without corroboration, to have been born outside of the hospital.

In a 2010 citizen-led investigation, a visitor to the health department confirmed that in a book in which all births are reportedly recorded is an anomaly above Obama’s name not present with other entries.

Two successive press conferences on July 17, 2012 and December 15, 2016 revealed additional details reinforcing Zullo’s earlier findings.  At the final presser, Zullo reported that two outside forensic experts from different continents and working from different disciplines agreed with his conclusion that the long-form image cannot be considered authentic.

Last year, Zullo revealed on a radio broadcast that two experienced U.S. intelligence agents informed him that it is “an open secret” in Washington, DC that Barack Hussein Obama II was not born in the United States.

While the birth-certificate investigation did not focus on Obama’s birthplace, the revelation supports the many reports generated by Obama’s literary agent, NPR, The Standard, The Honolulu Advertiser, Dr. Jerome Corsi, and Matthews that Obama was born outside of the country.

The Post & Email strives for accuracy in its reporting and as a newspaper does not make claims that cannot be demonstrated by evidence or informed by highly-reliable sources.  We value our readers, who according to Moz are continuing to seek the truth about Obama’s origins and purported documentation.