Missing from Obama Birth-Certificate Chapter: “Mike Zullo”

THE SNUB HEARD ACROSS THE COUNTRY

by Sharon Rondeau

(Feb. 18, 2020) — In a departure from our normal practice of withholding commentary, The Post & Email is compelled to report that what has been repackaged in a chapter of Dr. Thomas Horn’s “Shadowland” as “shocking” and revelatory is recycled information gleaned from the hard, unpaid work and sacrifice of another.

As promised last fall, The Post & Email recently purchased the book, now available on Kindle, and read the chapter authored and heavily promoted by Carl Gallups in recent broadcasts.  Contrary to Gallups’s numerous portrayals on his podcasts and on Horn’s “SkywatchTV” of the chapter’s “shocking” information, as someone who has closely followed the Obama birth-certificate investigation conducted by Mike Zullo, this writer found no new information nor anything reaching the level of “shocking.”

Prior to his association with the Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff’s Office, which commissioned the investigation in August 2011, Zullo was a sworn law-enforcement officer and detective with investigative training, including homicide investigations. In 2017, a former colleague of Zullo’s described his investigational work product as “always a cut above.” 

In a strange coincidence, The Post & Email has reviewed Zullo’s certificate for his receiving and completion of law-enforcement training in “Occult and Satanic Crime Investigation.”  A topic of occult-inspired criminal activity is a focus in Horn’s new book. Zullo, however, was not consulted.

Gallups’s chapter, which capitalizes on the 5+-year criminal investigation conducted by Zullo on a voluntary basis, most notably contains a glaring omission:  the name “Mike Zullo.”  As the only source of information on the investigation into the “birth certificate” image commissioned by then-Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, Zullo’s name is “shockingly” nowhere to be found.

Gallups cites Zullo’s work in the February 13 edition of Horn’s SKYWATCH TV, but not once in the chapter. This writer observes that by omitting any mention of Zullo yet claiming to possess “new forensic information” apart from Zullo, Gallups appears to have invented a new role for himself which Horn is actively promulgating.

Readers can decide for themselves the motives driving these actions.

In a highly-revelatory interview late last week, Zullo told The Post & Email that contention between Gallups and him arose over the chapter and related incidents, and in a punitive act, Gallups systematically removed all references to him in a re-edited version of the chapter.

On his January 24, 2020 “Freedom Friday” broadcast, Gallups portrayed the final product as very similar to a draft Zullo reviewed late last year.  However, Zullo told The Post & Email that at the time, his name was invoked frequently throughout the draft.

Zullo said that in a side-by-side comparison between the draft he reviewed and the published chapter, the omission of his name caused Gallups to edit or remove other important information so it would not require a mention of his name.

The Post & Email noted that Gallups omitted Zullo’s name even from documents written by others, namely an August 3, 2016 statement by document examiner Reed Hayes, who Zullo commissioned to examine the birth-certificate image.  Where Zullo’s name appears in the statement quoted from Hayes’s website, Gallups noticeably placed an ellipsis.

At Location 1768 in the Kindle version, Gallups included the following from Hayes’s statement:

In the past I have been approached numerous times to review the birth-certificate issue. I always refused, given my political leanings and the resulting potential for reaching biased opinions about the matter.  I finally agreed when…the Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Posse contacted me in November 2012, reminding myself that as a handwriting and document examiner my duty is to allow whatever documentation I’m examining to speak for itself and that I am not an advocate for either side or any party.… I have made a concerted effort to lay personal bias aside and work toward the most objective opinions regarding the Obama birth-certificate matter.…

Hayes’s statement on his website reads:

In the past I have been approached numerous times to review the birth certificate issue. I always refused, given my political leanings and the resulting potential for reaching biased opinions about the matter.  I finally agreed when Michael Zullo of the Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Posse contacted me in November 2012, reminding myself that as a handwriting and document examiner my duty is to allow whatever documentation I’m examining to speak for itself and that I am not an advocate for either side or any party.  It might be likened to an attorney who defends a murder suspect but who does not condone murder.  As with any case that I work, I have made a concerted effort to lay personal bias aside and work toward the most objective opinions regarding the Obama birth certificate matter. [Emphasis added]

At Location 1777, the Gallups chapter reads:

As stated in my report…the COLB [Certificate of Live Birth] that I examined has so many blatant oddities that it makes me wonder if this particular PDF may have been created in an effort to impeach President Obama.

The same place in Hayes’s report reads:

As stated in my report to Mr. Zullo, the COLB that I examined has so many blatant oddities that it makes me wonder if this particular PDF may have been created in an effort to impeach President Obama. [Emphasis added]

“It took a lot of work to accomplish this task, and I find the intentionality to be very disturbing, not from the standpoint of being cut from the chapter, but from the position of Gallups’s state of mind to act with such deliberate contempt,” Zullo said. “It kind-of conjures images of the guy who cuts out letters from magazines and pastes them on paper to mail a threatening letter.”

“Gallups has blurred lines of reality in his vainglorious pontifications over the years and seems to have woven a persona of being much more deeply involved and of importance to the investigation than the truth will bear out,” Zullo told us.  “The fact is, Gallups never provided anything — any information or expertise — to the investigation, but to hear him speak, one would think he was the third investigator working so very closely on the case. Nothing could be farther from the truth.  He was a news outlet of sorts.  For the five years I was traveling and living out of suitcases in pursuit of the truth, Gallups was home turning out book after book at a rate faster than waffles coming off the grill at the Waffle House. There are so many aspects of this investigation that he simply does not know.”

“The only reason he can even speak to this on a higher level than most is due to his proximity to me, and the positioning of him as an unofficial spokesman was done for a reason. Without me, he would have nothing to talk about.  However, over the years it was becoming apparent that Gallups has developed an ill-conceived sense of ownership of the Birth Certificate issue and a misguided sense of entitlement to the investigation. He credits much of this to being made aware of the topic in approximately 2007 when a listener called in to a radio show and brought it to his attention. Gallups claims he has been investigating the topic ever since. He has made statements on his radio show referring to this and claiming he was involved and investigating all of this before Arpaio and I ‘got involved.’ The fact is Gallups got involved with us; we did not get involved with him,” Zullo said.

“Gallups never supplied the investigation with any investigational work product. I guess if sitting at your desk using the internet to see what work others have done and talking about it for years on the radio is investigating; well, I must have missed that part in my academy training.

“In fact, when confronted with his investigational claims, he has now rebranded himself from opening his own investigation to writing and investigating from a journalistic perspective. He has recently made claims and morphed himself into a newly-minted investigative journalist. I have never heard him say that in the seven years I have known him, but he is today.  After much pushback Gallups has most recently made strides to clarify he was not the investigator, to his credit, but it is CYA.”

After reading the chapter, this writer contacted Gallups and Horn multiple times to ask why Zullo’s name was omitted but received no response, a surprising development given that Gallups and this writer had long enjoyed a collegiate relationship based on our mutual interest in the birth-certificate investigation.

In a surprising development, Zullo told us last week that as a result of the chapter and the circumstances surrounding it, he is no longer providing information to Gallups and that he actually “throttled back” giving him information in mid-2017.  “Unfortunately, I saw all this coming to the surface in late 2016,” Zullo said.

“As a result of Gallups’s recent behavior and breach of confidentiality, neither I nor Sheriff Arpaio will be providing any further information to Gallups,” Zullo said. “Gallups’s information​ channel was completely shut down as of October 2019.”

Zullo additionally presented this writer with documentation validating his position that a breach of confidence and trust of a six-year agreement between the two had taken place in the writing and publishing of the chapter.

That finding also stemmed from Gallups’s reading of a partial text message between Zullo and Gallups on his January 24 radio show. “Gallups used my name and comments out of context to give the illusion that I was ‘thrilled’ with the chapter and ‘the power of it,’” Zullo said.  “Keep in mind this was a chapter that was re-edited.  I had no idea what was in it; all I knew was what he told me and that he was removing all reference to me and my name as well. And this after assurances from Gallups and Horn that the chapter was not even going to be used. But the reading of the text message along with the absolute misrepresentation of my thoughts on the chapter was a threshold crossed that will not be tolerated and will not go unaddressed.”

​​The Post & Email is in possession of the entire text message and found Zullo’s claim to be substantiated and communicated that claim to Gallups and Horn in our emails.

Zullo said he was dismayed when he later discovered that prior to the chapter being written for this book, unbeknownst to him, the birth-certificate investigation was being “prostituted” by Gallups and Horn to sell books from other authors of Defender Publishing (Horn’s company), including  Gallups’s prior works. “Gallups was more than willing to do recorded interviews about the investigation and his so-called involvement in an effort to tantalize the audience, and in turn these interviews were included as a free promotional (Tom Horn Secret Files) giveaway in an effort to entice book sales on unrelated topics,” Zullo said.  “This was something I told Gallups I was firmly against because I absolutely did not want to see the investigation’s integrity diminished.  However, Gallups did it anyway.”

Zullo went on to say that the situation predates the writing of the chapter. In early 2019, Zullo said, Gallups reached out to him with an invitation from Tom Horn to appear alongside Gallups on Skywatch TV to discuss the birth-certificate investigation. Gallups explained to Zullo that it was a special promotional taping of a round-table discussion with other authors about “Deep State” activities. He told Zullo that it was a special discussion and was going to be included as a free giveaway with Horn’s upcoming book release. “I refused to take part,” Zullo said.

Zullo said he explained to Gallups that under no circumstances did he want the birth-certificate investigation to be monetized and used as a “free promotional gimmick to sell someone else’s book.” Zullo said he was repulsed by the idea after having invested five years, 15,000 hours of voluntary service, and the personal sacrifice he and his family made to bring this all-important investigation to a close and that he made Gallups well aware of his position.

Zullo said he told Gallups “no” and also cautioned Gallups that Horn would eventually come to him and ask him to write something. According to Zullo, Gallups told him he would just “tell Tom ‘no'” and that he could not write anything. Also, Zullo said, he cautioned Gallups “that once you start giving this kind of stuff to a publisher for free they never stop wanting your free service.”  Zullo said he told Gallups that he has “done enough for free” and was just not interested. He also said he told Gallups that he did not think the time was right to bring the investigation up to the surface again. “Gallups told me he would go on the show and talk only about the things we had already discussed on the radio,” Zullo said. “There was nothing I could do about it, so I just let it go.” Zullo said he had no idea what this was going to actually turn into, and he believes Gallups was hoping Zullo wouldn’t find out.

“They even went as far as to include a video of the December 2016 press conference in the offer, which can easily be found on Youtube today. It is not a secret,” Zullo said.  “The impression was that this was something new and never revealed before. This stuff has been out there for over four years now. The December press conference had over four million views four years ago, but they are calling it and the forensic findings exclusive and new today. It sickens me to see all my hard work reduced to a promotional ad for Carl Gallups’s book sales.

“Sharon, Tom Horn had an opportunity in 2017 to publish a book by Gallups and me which would have revealed the in-depth truth of the entire investigation and everything surrounding it; he chose not to.  At least that was what I was told by Gallups.  And your readers have to understand we had a six-year confidentiality agreement, one which Gallups actually voiced on his own radio show under his pastoral covering of confidentiality. In addition to that, nothing was to be written and when the time came we would do it together. So some information was shared with him.

“Sharon, there was absolutely no misunderstanding. In fact, so prevalent was the secrecy aspect Gallups would unrelentingly taunt his audience about knowing information that he cannot talk about.

“Since 2017, I have turned down two book offers and one offer to make a documentary on the investigation. I don’t believe the time is right.  So this issue here is not about a book deal.  I believe this investigation and its findings may one day have a profound impact on this nation. I believe this to be the foundational lie to the Presidency to the United States, and the largest Mass Fraud in American  history,” Zullo told us emphatically. “I did not work 15,000 voluntary hours ​over five years of my life to have it reduced to this type of bastardization.

“The information shared with Carl Gallups and his relationship to me were never intended to be used for this purpose and Gallups knows it. Despite repeated assurances to the contrary in 2017, Gallups began to make overtures about being able to write about his own life story and his part in the birth-certificate saga, but in the next breath he said he would ‘never do that.’ This happened on a number of occasions and aroused my suspicions so much so that I throttled back on the information flow to him.

“I had not seen the Carl Gallups sales-pitch interview recordings until months after they were released,” Zullo continued.  “I was unaware that they were even in existence. I was speechless when I learned of them.  They are full of hype, mischaracterizations and outright depictions of events that just did not happen.  To say I was angry is an understatement; I am incensed. However, the true motive is now becoming clear. Aside from selling books, they are trying to position themselves using the chapter as a placeholder for something they think is going to happen in the near future.  I​ also think Carl has become so self-absorbed in this investigation and so wants his name attached to it that he is losing sight of reality.

“Sharon, Carl Gallups is not my peer, he is not my colleague, not my partner in this investigation or the investigation concerning the CIA informant. He has never seen that information. Yet when he speaks he makes it sound as if he was present when the information was turned over to us.   He was a radio guy with a media outlet that I needed at the time, being fed some information for release.   We had never heard of him until after the second press conference in July 2012. His name did not even surface once in the initial stages of the investigation. And to be candid, I had three radio outlets to choose from at the time. I chose him because of his being a 35-year pastor and his prior involvement in law enforcement. There was a comfort level. And you would think he would be someone who would keep his word and the secret at the same time.

“So this is not about the chapter. I never asked him to pull the chapter; it is about a breach of trust and confidence and the selling-out of this five-year investigation that was a sacrifice for the good of the country. Gallups sacrificed nothing. He is using it to enhance his brand. He seeks to bring notoriety to himself and gin up book sales for himself and his publisher. Nothing more, nothing less.  As far as the investigation goes he is a non-entity. He was a radio outlet, a confidant under his pastoral covering, and self-described ‘Man of Integrity.” He was treated as a friend. I remember him telling me, ‘Boy, there are going to be so many people wanting to ride your coattails it is going to make you so angry.’ Well, I guess Gallups bought a first-class ticket on the Coattail Express.

“To make matters worse the chapter is basically an outline of connecting the dots. In 2018 I asked Carl to see if there was any interest in Horn doing a book in late 2020.  Carl told me that Tom Horn was interested in an outline of what a book on the investigation would contain. In my privileged discussions with Gallups I outlined the birth-certificate connections to the Deep State to the coup to overthrow the president, CIA, to all roads leading back to John Brennan, to James Clapper (by the way, the Brennan stuff was cut out of the chapter because th​ere was no way he could get around using my name), and much more.  I decided not to provide an outline to Horn without some type of agreement, but Carl now knew what my thoughts were and that I had the information to substantiate it all. What you see in his chapter is in fact my outline. From what I can see Carl’s contribution is some “Hillary started it all,” which he told me about years ago. Some of the media reports and footnote clips I had not seen before. But, that stuff is not relevant to my investigation. I called it what it is in the text message he read on-air.

“He uses his relationship to me and his limited access to the Sheriff and his Special Deputy honorary appointment (which means absolutely nothing, but he plays it to the hilt), all to bolster his own credibility. All he can tell you about the investigation is a result of  my work product; if I was not whispering in his ear he would know nothing more than the average reader of your publication.”

Zullo said that in October, he asked Gallups for “a phone call” to discuss the matter and to date “is still waiting for it.”  “It seems the phone confrontation was too much for him to handle,” Zullo said.  In our interview, Zullo​ said he wanted to make it clear that Gallups has not released any sensitive information regarding the investigation just yet, although Zullo said Gallups is on “a slippery slope” and that it is a situation that is being “closely monitored.”

Zullo played the pivotal role in the entire investigation.  For all intents and purposes, Zullo is the investigation. While Sheriff Arpaio commissioned the investigation and without him there would be no investigation, it was Zullo he trusted and commissioned to bring it to a successful conclusion.  The Post & Email has seen Tom Horn’s promotional clips marketing the “Secret Files.” One can plainly see that a clip from the 2016 press conference is used which shows Zullo’s face mildly blurred out, but no mention of his name in print.  Zullo is forever attached to the Obama Certificate; his image and name can be found in dozens of articles, photos, videos, and interviews on the web.  This begs the question, “How do you leave the most pivotal role and the most pivotal person out of the entire body of work when you are claiming all of it is taken from all public information?”

Just as bewildering is the fact that this writer’s work is footnoted in the chapter where Zullo is the source of the information if not the topic of the article.  The burning question is, “How does Carl Gallups, the author, omit Zullo when Zullo appeared on Gallups’s own radio show, dialogued with him for dozens of hours for over five years (this writer reported on them) and claim to be an investigative journalist?

The public simply is not getting an accurate account from the chapter. If they read the chapter they come away with names connected to the birth-certificate investigation, specifically Sheriff Arpaio, Special Deputy Carl Gallups, Reed Hayes and Forlab, but not the name of the man who actually investigated it and solved it.  Something is very, very wrong.

This writer also feels compelled to say that over the years, she has been privy to certain information stemming from the investigation, particularly a glimpse into the sacrifices and hardships Mike Zullo and his family have endured as a result of the assignment, which he could have abandoned at any time.  We are therefore keenly aware of many of the twists and turns, self-aggrandizing glory-seekers and outright betrayals thrown in Zullo’s path as he worked to complete a near-impossible task.

As expressed to Gallups last week, this writer sincerely hopes that the situation between Zullo and him can be resolved given their nearly-seven-year professional relationship, but is not optimistic based on the lack of response to multiple email inquiries and continued promotions of the birth-certificate chapter.

This is a developing story with more to come.