Observers Question Former Zullo Confidant’s Motive in Writing Birth-Certificate Chapter

THE COMMON THREAD IS “WHY?”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Mar. 2, 2020) — Over the last week, a number of readers and observers expressed a range of reactions to the publication of a chapter by Pastor and “Freedom Friday” host Carl Gallups about the reported forgery of Barack Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate as reported here, here, and here.

The work appears as “Chapter 3” in the book, “Shadowland” by Dr. Thomas R. Horn, published by Horn’s company, Defender Publishing.  Defender has been publishing Gallups’s books since 2018.

Gallups’s writing of the chapter last fall brought about the unexpected end of his longstanding professional and seven-year friendship with former detective and private investigator Mike Zullo, who conducted a 5+-year probe into the image posted in 2011 at whitehouse.gov purported to represent Barack Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate from the State of Hawaii.

The probe was authorized in August 2011 by then-Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, prompted by the signatures of 242 constituents concerned that if initial analyses of the online image finding it problematic proved accurate, their votes in the 2012 election would be disenfranchised.

At an initial press conference on March 1, 2012, Zullo declared the “long-form” image a “computer-generated forgery” and Obama’s purported Selective Service registration form also inauthentic.

Beginning in late 2012, Zullo was a frequent guest on Gallups’s radio show to provide updates on the investigation, which ended in December 2016.  The two also appeared together on other shows to discuss the investigational findings.  In 2013, they traveled to National Harbor, MD to the annual CPAC conference, where Zullo presented evidence gathered from the investigation to several past and present lawmakers and other close followers of events in Washington, DC.

In January 2019, Gallups and Zullo announced they planned to write a book about the investigation which Zullo later revealed was the outgrowth of a years-long mutual agreement to be realized when the “time was right.”

The bond between Zullo and Gallups began to break down in late September, just weeks after Gallups began promoting the chapter on his show, and Gallups’s insistence on going forward with writing the chapter alone and including it in Horn’s upcoming book.

For his part, in email correspondence Horn had also told Zullo, after Zullo voiced concerns about it, that he would not publish the chapter in “Shadowland” or at any point in the future.

Neither Horn nor Gallups has responded to emails as to why a chapter about a criminal investigation into Obama’s government identification was included in a book about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the late Jeffrey Epstein, and “the Occult Elite.”  Most strikingly, Zullo’s name appears nowhere in the chapter, with Gallups even taking the additional step of methodically excising it from previously-written material by document examiner Reed Hayes, who Zullo formally hired and consulted about the birth certificate.

Gallups has claimed an overwhelming positive response to his chapter after “Shadowland” became available on Kindle on January 5. As of this writing, comments on the Facebook page of ppsimmons, the media outlet Gallups co-founded in 2008, which specifically mention the birth certificate, are in fact negligible.  As of early Saturday afternoon, The Post & Email located only six comments invoking the birth-certificate probe on the book’s Amazon “U.S. Reviews” pages.

The individuals with whom The Post & Email spoke and some of whom have met Gallups, indicated bewilderment, surprise, disbelief and even a sense of sadness that Gallups violated Zullo’s trust by writing and publishing the chapter after promising Zullo just the opposite.

The Obama birth-certificate investigation bears no connection to the subject of “Shadowland,” Zullo told us, adding that he believes its inclusion in the book “will prove damaging to the integrity of the investigation.”

Mike Volin, founder of WheresObamasBirthCertificate.com, said that after the publication of our recent articles, two of his followers called him to ask, “What’s up?” to which he recalled telling them, “It is what it is; Carl has abandoned Mike Zullo’s trust and just decided to make some money on the book, and we have to move on.  It’s unfortunate.”

A retired psychologist, Ph.D., and long-term observer of the birth-certificate investigation told us:

I wasn’t necessarily a follower of Freedom Friday, but because I’m very interested in this particular subject, I always made it a point to put it on and see if there was anything new being said. I am not diagnosing Carl Gallups in any form or fashion, but the way I feel about this is that in the beginning, he did a lot of good. He was helpful in trying to get this information out when people were thinking it was a crazy conspiracy. Truth tends to be different than that. Mike Zullo took a hypothesis and did the work on this, so it’s really sad. The piece that I worry about now with Carl is not just the lack of trust with the relationship, which is huge, but it’s the intent. The intent is damaging on other levels. I personally witnessed this family go through a lot. When I think about what Mike did as a volunteer and then continue to do it and get harassed, I say to myself, “What bravery, and we don’t have that bravery anymore in this country.”

And then I think about what Carl did, and I think, “What a coward.” It’s cowardly behavior vs. “bravery” behavior, but it’s sad because of their relationship. I still believe this is going to go somewhere, and when it does, he will be cut out. I hope this doesn’t damage the whole situation. I can’t say for sure what’s going on in Carl’s mind to so easily dismiss Mike and portray that he was the investigator – that it was “all about me.” How does someone trust someone like this again? I followed all the shows, and I was happy that somebody was out there supporting Mike like that, but then to turn around and cut him out…

Carl wasn’t the investigator in the actual dealings, but he was an investigator in terms of putting all of the pieces together so that he could report it on his show. That may be what he was thinking, but when you couple that with some of the other aspects he’s put forth, you have to wonder, “What was the true intent here? Why would he feel so important to eliminate Mike from this? Why would a pastor do that, and that makes me wonder, “Well, is he really a pastor?”

It’s strange behavior and out of character for someone who is a proponent of always doing right. It makes me wonder, “Is someone asking him to do this?” There’s just something strange about the whole thing.

I think it was a cowardly way for someone to optimize attention for yourself or your book or radio station. We need more bravery in this country. The actions appear to support a cowardly position. To not even call him back is not right. The word “righteousness” comes to mind.

Miki Booth, author of “Memoirs of a Community Organizer from Hawai’i,” revealed to The Post & Email in an interview last week that she organized the gathering at Zullo’s home which took place after the final presser on December 15, 2016.  She met everyone who attended, Booth recalled, including Gallups.  “It went from six people to about 30 people on the list,” she said.

Comments on Booth’s Facebook page in response to our initial article include:

On February 22, Booth posted:

My book published in 2012 chronicles the efforts of birthers like me in exposing obama for the deep state fraud he is. The book was written prior to Sheriff Arpaio and Mike Zullo’s investigation which proved the obama birth certificate released on April 27, 2011 is indeed a manufactured forgery. One of the first copies I mailed complimentary was to private citizen Donald Trump who knew obama’s birth certificates were fake. I have faith he hasn’t forsaken us. It’s about timing. I referred to what is now commonly called “deep state” as the “powers that be.” The players haven’t changed. We the #Birthers challenged the deep state and we all suffered retaliation in one form or another…

One post from a Zullo supporter was shared more than 50 times, Booth said.

Another longtime observer of the birth-certificate investigation told The Post & Email that she believes Gallups’s motive in publishing the chapter amounts to one word:  “money.”

After Zullo asked Gallups to call him to discuss the chapter last September, Gallups first responded apologetically, then became hostile, emails show.  “It was like those emails came from two different people,” Zullo said. “And it gets worse.  In a rather embarrassing, sophomoric attempt to regain control over an indefensible position Gallups went as far as attempting to bully me into submission by stating I needed to do some major bridge-building back to him or else.  He said if I did not he had nothing left to say to me, and that I really needed to think about the long-run ramifications of my challenge to him and went on accusing me of being irrational. I am sure Gallups’s ego does not like being called out and confronted but I can assure you I am not the one who is irrational.  This is part of the reason I believe his actions are in fact punitive and self-serving in nature.

Gallups never called him, Zullo said, then initiated the severing of their six-year-old agreement and relationship.

Zullo is particularly troubled, he said, with the inclusion of the birth-certificate chapter in a book whose author says details illegal and abhorrent activity allegedly taking place on Epstein’s private island, Little St. James.  Zullo said that the birth-certificate investigation work was performed using facts, scientific analysis, and evidentiary standards and believes it does not belong in a book filled with latent conjecture and inference.

This writer observes that Horn’s writing style, and Gallups’ in Chapter 3, attempts to connect people and events, often drawn from a photograph or inference of participation in illegal or cultish activity, without conclusive evidence.  Assumptions were also made by the mainstream media about the Obama birth-certificate and “eligibility” issues without any investigation.

“I never associated Barack Obama as the person creating the phony birth certificate,” Zullo told us on that point.  “I said, ‘Maybe he doesn’t even know, maybe he does, but I have zero evidence to prove this either way.’ To level a charge either way would be irresponsible.    I don’t do ‘guilty by association’; when you do that, I think you are bearing false witness. Just because some high-profile people may be at a gathering at the same time or taking a photo together does not mean they are partners in crime. Didn’t we learn that by watching the false accusations against Trump? Take a picture with someone and then you’re falsely accused over a photograph.”

“Wordsmithing a narrative can also be very deceptive,” Zullo continued.  “Let’s look at Carl Gallups’s deputization and the way he’s portrayed it, for example.  Let’s be frank about it:  it is 110% meaningless; it absolutely means nothing.   But look at the way he’s wordsmithed it to give an impression of importance and authority. He constantly leads off with,  ‘I was deputized by Sheriff Arpaio. Because of my LE experience … . I worked closely on this..’  Just because he believes this narrative does not make it true, but that’s what people are going to think, and they’re going to believe that he possessed something that was so important to the Sheriff that this needed to be done.  This is just not true.  Gallups is now desperately trying to maintain a fleeting resemblance of credibility by telling his audience in carefully-chosen wording he has spoken to the Sheriff.  Well, Sharon, initiating a call with the Sheriff and the Sheriff not giving you any further information are two different things. Trust me:  all of Gallups’s informational highways are closed. He’s out.

“Arpaio deputized honorary positions of others during his six terms as sheriff, not one of them were involved in any law-enforcement or investigative activities,” Zullo said, a designation to which another observer referred in the context of Gallups’s having overblown the honorary designation from Arpaio which conferred no law-enforcement authority.

“I actually think his last response to me was premeditated,” Zullo added of Gallups, “because there’s no justification for it.  If you go to the very first email with him, he starts to challenge my observation by saying, ‘I’m shocked at your response.’  Now think about that:  I asked him one question, and that’s what I got back.  That’s what makes me tend to think that this is a manufactured crisis for an ulterior motive.”

“Carl Gallups and Tom Horn were or are pastors,” Zullo continued.  “Is this the level of ‘integrity’ Carl says he has?  That ‘man of integrity’ rap is just a pre-justification for an action he is about to take or give justification for having taken them. ​He uses that as a shield to give the impression that his actions are of a moral character, ‘righteousness.’ But there’s nothing righteous about him not respecting the rights of the individuals who did all the work and breaking an agreement for nothing else but selfish motives.  The entire thing is crazy if you think about it in the purest sense; none of it makes any sense. However, when you attach an ulterior motive to it all it all falls in place.  Why the urgency just now? He couldn’t have waited 12 more months; it’s only been seven years? There are reasons for this and it didn’t just happen in a vacuum.  Gallups and his publisher had to conspire together over this situation. Remember Horn saw the original chapter as referenced in his email to me stating he was not going to use it. He is the author of the book so you know he absolutely read the re-edited copy that now appears in the book. Gallups needs to keep Horn happy, needs to keep the income stream flowing, and to shore up the fallacy of being an expert on the subject for TV audiences. This is all about ego and dollars.”

In a further observation, Zullo said that Gallups’s chapter bears no mention of Mark Gillar, a citizen researcher who Zullo said contributed significant time and assistance to the investigation.  “Here’s a guy who just did it and sacrificed time, and Carl Gallups did nothing but talk and build up his audience and inflate his own reputation,” Zullo said.

Zullo told The P&E that Gallups’s acting as an unofficial media outlet was actually strategically planned and viewed as expendable in its overall purpose to the investigation. “This is in contrast to the role of Mark Gillar,” Zullo said. “Mark had an indispensable role in the investigation. His time and talents over five years were invaluable to me as an investigator to the successful conclusion to the investigation.”

Zullo said that for every hour he may have spent with Carl Gallups on the phone over five years, he probably spent six in conversation with Gallar. Zullo said he and Gillar worked together for years and that working relationship led to the discovery of the incriminating evidence that was ultimately confirmed by two forensic experts.  “Mark knows more about the actual document investigative work from his direct involvement than Gallups ever possibly could because of the simple fact that Gallups was just not involved,” Zullo said. “Mark lived it, Mark worked it, Mark helped solve it.  Carl only talks about it; that is a major distinction.”

Finally, Zullo said, “People who observed Carl say this is a departure with no basis in fact.  So if he wants to start taking his own advice, perhaps he needs to start looking at his own spiritual condition.  The saddest part about all of this is I watch as a man, a pastor, absolutely obliterates his very own Christian Witness before the eyes of my entire family and now your readership. My children actually trusted him at one time.  Sadly it appears the mask has come off.  That to me is the real tragedy here.  But if you want to look at this in natural terms, this is bowing down to the god of mammon and ginning up favor with your handlers and hyping book sales in hopes of profiting in the future.  He is just using the investigation for his own financial reward at this point. That is plain for all to see.”