CLOSE Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says a new video analysis shows that parts of Obama's birth certificate were copied from another certificate. After arguing his point for five years, Arpaio says he will turn this new evidence over to the fed. USA TODAY

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio speaks during a press conference in Phoenix on Dec. 15, 2016, about an investigation into President Barack Obama's birth certificate. (Photo: David Wallace/The Republic)

PHOENIX — It was a presentation hyped by a tauntingly brief media notification more than 24 hours earlier: On Thursday afternoon, it said, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio would present the newest revelations on an investigation into President Obama’s birth certificate.

At 4 p.m. sharp, Arpaio and a member of his Sheriff's Office's Cold Case Posse had a big message for the 40-odd journalists in attendance: You were wrong.

Arpaio and his aides announced that a five-year investigation had "proved" that Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii in 1961 was a fake. An accompanying presentation highlighted what they called “9 points of forgery” on the document, which focused on the angles of date stamps, typed letters and words.

According to the theory, the birth certificate presented to the public was created after copying and pasting information from the legitimate birth certificate of a woman born in Hawaii.

The conference included an audience of mostly older supporters, many of whom would clap their hands or nod their heads at various points of the event.

Mike Zullo, a posse member, talked throughout the bulk of the news conference, and for about 50 minutes walked the audience through what he claimed was irrefutable proof that the birth certificate had been forged.

Zullo repeatedly insisted that the probe was not political and that he simply wanted to “clear” the president of the United States.

“It didn’t work out that way,” he said.

ARPAIO, TRUMP ONCE ALIGNED ON 'BIRTHER' ISSUE

Arpaio's focus on the outgoing president has spanned several years. Obama was a favorite subject in Arpaio's fundraiser emails, speeches and campaign ads, and the president was blamed for the lawman's civil rights-related legal battles.

Arpaio's persistence on the "birther" issues has outlived that of many other once-fervent supporters.

President-elect Donald Trump had been a leader of the movement to prove Obama was not a natural-born citizen and was therefore not eligible for the nation's highest office. After years of persistent questioning — seen by many as racially motivated — the president produced his long-form birth certificate in April 2011.

In September, Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee, announced he was dropping the issue.

Obama responded in a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation: “I don’t know about you guys, but I am so relieved that the whole birther thing is over. I mean, ISIL, North Korea, poverty, climate change — none of those things weighed on my mind like the validity of my birth certificate.”

PROBE LAUNCHED BY POSSE MEMBERS

The Sheriff's Office's own "birther" investigation dates to August 2011, months after the White House website posted an image of Obama's birth certificate. The probe was led by the Sheriff's Office's Cold Case Posse, a non-profit arm of the office made up of often-retired volunteers.

Thursday's news conference recalled two other "birther" news conferences from 2012.

At those events, no one explicitly claimed the birth certificate was a fake. They were instead fueled by innuendo, the suspicions of volunteers, and a throng of impassioned "tea party" supporters.

In March 2012, Zullo spent 50 minutes walking the media through what he said were irregularities in the White House's posted document.

Zullo had a repeat performance in July of that year, when he explained the investigators' findings after a 10-day trip to Hawaii. At that event, Zullo said investigators located a 95-year-old woman who might have written coding on the copy of Obama's birth certificate. That woman, Zullo said, later told a fake reporter that the numbers on Obama's birth certificate were inconsistent with the time and place of his birth.

Zulllo has surfaced in more recent Arpaio controversies as well. He was one of the key figures in what's known as the "Seattle Operation" — a pet project of the sheriff's that became a focal point during Arpaio's contempt-of-court hearings last year.

Zullo’s task was to keep an eye on a computer programmer named Dennis Montgomery, who had told Arpaio he could prove the federal government had hacked into the bank accounts of thousands of Maricopa County residents.

Montgomery’s work soon seemed to stray from that mission, however. In reports provided to the Sheriff’s Office, Montgomery presents a web of conspiracies involving a federal judge presiding over a racial-profiling case against Arpaio, along with Eric Holder and various other federal officials. Arpaio’s critics said the operation was a thinly veiled attempt to undermine a judge who had ruled unfavorably against the sheriff.

Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2hM9Jv4</s>Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio held a press conference on Thursday to release information he says proves that President Barack Obama's long form birth certificate is a forgery.

Arpaio said he received information in 2011 that indicated the certificate could have been forged, and he consulted forensic experts from around the world who agree it is not authentic.

Arpaio and his team are not claiming that Obama was not born in Hawaii, but only that the long form birth certificate is not authentic. So-called "birthers" have questioned Obama's place-of-birth, saying he was born in Kenya, which they say disqualifies him to serve as president of the United States. Obama says he was born in Hawaii.

"We had to follow the evidence," Arpaio said before turning the briefing over to lead investigator Mike Zullo.

Zullo showed video of Obama's birth certificate alongside one of a person named Johanna Ah'Nee. Zullo said that the forensic experts found "nine points of forgery" from which parts of Zullo's birth certificate was copied to the one purporting to be Obama's.

Among them was a stamped date that had the exact same angle. By comparison, a set of twins born five minutes apart had birth certificates where the stamp did not align exactly.

"I didn't want to be the guy that figured everything out, I wanted to be the clearinghouse," Zullo said. "It's a fake, and this carries federal penalties."

Zullo said the "safety paper" used by Hawaii is easily obtained on eBay, but even at that, no original piece of paper has been seen by very many members of the press. Instead, the White House provided a .jpg image to the Associated Press, which distributed it to members.

As for the stamp, one was obtained at Kinko's for $25, "no questions asked."

Arpaio would not take questions from the media afterward, but called on Congress to look into the matter.

"If you can hold hearings on underinflated footballs, why can't you hold hearings on this?" he said. "Look at our evidence."

The 84-year-old sheriff lost his latest bid for re-election, and faces an April 4 trial on a misdemeanor contempt charge for continuing immigration patrols for 17 months after a judge in a racial profiling case ordered him to stop.</s>Investigators who conducted a forensic five year investigation into the birth certificate presented by President Barack Obama have concluded it is a forgery.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio told reporters at a press conference on Thursday that forensic investigators found that the birth certificate Obama presented them with was a fraudulently created documented copied from the original certificate.

“We had to follow the evidence,” Arpaio said told reporters.

Mike Zullo, who headed the investigation, presented a video which highlighted “9 points of forgery,” on Obama’s birth certificate.

The sheriffs office slammed the mainstream media for criticising their investigation . “You have continued to mischaracterize this.. This was not about where President Obama was born. This was about his birth certificate.”

Jerome Corsi, Ph.D., WND senior staff writer and author of “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” was credited by sheriff’s officials with contributing to the investigation.

Corsi said Mike Zullo, head of the Cold Case Posse, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio “have done the United States a heroic service demonstrating by forensic analysis that the long form birth certificate produced in a White House news conference on April 27, 2011, as Barack Obama’s authentic birth certificate is a forgery.”

“The nine points of forgery between the Johanna Ah’nee birth certificate and Obama’s [long-form birth certificate] prove convincingly that the Ah’nee birth certificate was the source document from which the Obama LFBC was created.”

Corsi said Arpaio’s five-year effort “vindicates the extensive research WND conducted over years to bring this issue to the attention of the American public.”

“The inescapable conclusion is that the Hawaii Department of Health has not shown the American public the original 1961 birth records for Barack Obama, if they actually exist,” he said.

“That President Obama’s birth certificate is fake, as proven now by a legitimate law enforcement examination raises serious questions that high crimes and misdemeanors have been committed at the highest level of government. The clear conclusion is that the Obama presidency may have been illegitimate, having violated Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution. Impeachment procedures may be required, even if those procedures are conducted after Obama leaves office.”

The sheriff’s video said there were nine images on the Obama birth certificate that appear to be identical to, and copied from, another birth certificate issued in Hawaii just days after his birth.

The copied items include the word “Honolulu,” “Oahu” twice, three different Xs. Their identical nature raised serious questions since they would have been applied to original documents by moving a typewriter carriage and roller at the time, a left date stamp and a right date stamp.

Explained the investigator on the video:

Doesn’t it just make sense that Alvin Onaka’s stamp and the April 25th date stamp were lifted from someplace also? Ask yourself this question. If anyone presented you with a document in your life that was this suspect would you readily accept it or would you begin an intense vetting, be it a house title, a car title, a piece of currency, anything? Would you accept something this suspect if presented to you in your life? If you answered no, then ask yourself a second question, don’t the American people have a right to vet the documents that they are presented by public officials.

One of the experts who assisted in the investigation was Reed Hayes, a court-qualified handwriting and document examiner, who runs a business in Hawaii. He is on the board of the Scientific Association of Forensic Examiners and has been in business nearly 40 years.

Forlabs, an Italian company that specializes in extracting information from multimedia files, also produced the results.

“We had two experts from two countries in separate disciplines of forensics that came to one conclusion: Barack Obama’s long form birth certificate it not authentic,” the report said.

Zullo, Arpaio’s lead investigator, said the “only reason why this investigation went forward and never came to a close was because of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.”

“Sheriff Arpaio utilized his statutory right to confirm his authority to conduct this investigation,” he said. “As a result, this investigation was done with the utmost of professionalism, unbiased and with no political motivation. We let the evidence direct the investigation.”

He pointed out that Arpaio and others on his team started out with the assumption that Obama’s document was legitimate and they just needed to affirm that.

“Every attempt was exercised to try to clear this document as authentic. However, the evidence and the weight of it simply would not permit that,” Zullo said.

During the news conference, Zullo quoted from the investigation of Hayes: “The (nail in the coffin) that proves that Certificate of Live Birth is inauthentic is the exact lineup of numerous entries on both [certificates].”

He said the experts likened the evidence to being as reliable as a fingerprint.

Zullo said there also were indications of problems when he interviewed Hawaiian officials about the document. He said they verified there was a birth record on file, but Hawaii statutes allow amendments to a birth document, so there is no way to know the details.

Regarding the birth announcements in local newspapers, there is a problem, he said.

“They don’t tell you anything. Hawaii says the Department of Health in Hawaii must create a record based on the representation from anyone.”

The local hospital also refused to help, he said.

“We have no idea what’s on that birth certificate. We have no idea if there was a birth certificate,” he said. “We don’t know if he’s a natural born citizen. That wasn’t anything we were pursuing.”

He noted that the safety paper appearing in the birth certificate image can even be purchased on Ebay.

Sheriff Arpaio added, “Five years ago I said one thing, show us the microfiche, the birth certificate and we’ll all go home.

“I plan on turning over this investigation this month to the federal government. And Congress. And hope Congress No. 1 will pass a law, the president should be vetted. Common sense.

“Maybe some members of Congress will hold some hearings, open to the public regarding this matter. … If they can hold hearings … on underinflated footballs, why can’t you hold one on this?

“Look at our evidence, just look at it,” he concluded. “I’m going tell you right now, we’re not going to answer any questions. We have sensitive information, but I’m not going into it.”

But he called it a “fake, fake, birth certificate.”

The sheriff’s office concluded: “It is the opinion of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office that the birth certificate on your right, belonging to Johanna Ah’nee, was in fact used as a source document in the digital creation of Barack Obama’s long form birth certificate.”

The video notes nine points of “forgery.”

“What are the odds that two stamps in two separate boxes stamped by hand … days apart would have the exact same angle?” the investigators ask.

Get commemorative “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” postcards. And who knows what President Trump may do to get to the bottom of this controversy once and for all.

“It should be pointed out these stamps were looked at by two separate document examiners in two forensic disciplines on two continents,” the video explains.

The investigators went further in their analysis, finding twin sisters whose birth certificates are similar to Ah-nee’s.

While they were born minutes apart their documents have variations that are not found between Ah’nee’s and Obama’s, who were born weeks apart.

“When you have two separate documents with two hand-placed stamps at the same angles, obviously a forgery has taken place,” the investigators said.</s>After nearly 24 years as Maricopa County Sheriff, the right-wing Arizona lawman known for forcing inmates into pink underwear and desert tents, lost his bid for re-election, even as Donald Trump won the presidency. Now, as the birther-in-chief prepares to succeed the nation’s first African-American president, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is leaving office with one final public appeal to press the case Barack Obama was born outside of the United States.

Arpaio held a press conference Thursday afternoon to discuss the “newest revelations” in his long-running “investigation” into Obama’s birth certificate.

The investigation concluded that the birth certificate was a “fraudulently created document, which has been represented as an official copy of the original birth certificate of President Obama,” Arpaio claimed. “We and anyone else who dare to question the document have been maligned, falsely labeled, grossly criticized in the bulk of the media, certain internet sources, for years.”

For five years, Arpaio has been peddling the false birther myth that elevated Trump to the White House. Ahead of the 2012 election, Arpaio dispatched a deputy and his volunteer posse to Hawaii as part of his so-called criminal investigation into Obama’s birth certificate.

“We feel that that document is a forgery,” Arpaio said when officials informed his team that the birth certificate released by the White House was authentic. “We’re trying to figure out who did it. That’s good police work.”</s>PHOENIX — Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona has fixated on the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate for more than five years, going so far as to send a deputy and member of his volunteer posse to Hawaii to question officials.

He earned plaudits from Donald Trump and became one of the nation's leading voices on the debunked controversy over Obama's birthplace. Arpaio plans to close his yearslong investigation Thursday, ending a chapter that critics denounced as a shameless ploy to raise money from his right-wing base.

The news conference from the media-savvy sheriff comes three weeks before the end of his 24 years as metro Phoenix's top law enforcer and five weeks before Obama leaves office.

The sheriff took up the "birther" mantle as he faced some of his worst legal troubles, including a racial profiling case that discredited his patrols targeting immigrants and a grand jury inquiry into his failed investigations of local political enemies.

He refused to back away from the investigation three months ago when Trump, an Arpaio ally, relented on his claim that Obama wasn't born in the U.S.

"He was trying to throw meat to his base, and that's exactly what he did," Gallardo said. "He threw red meat."

The Arizona Legislature passed a bill in 2011 that would have required Obama and other presidential candidates to prove they were U.S. citizens before their names could appear on the ballot. It was vetoed by the GOP governor.

Arpaio has said he launched the probe after nearly 250 people connected to an Arizona tea-party group requested it. He pressed forward despite aides warning he would be ridiculed.

In the 2014 documentary "The Joe Show," Arpaio was seen brushing aside his publicist's prediction that he would be viewed as a clown. The sheriff said the investigation would help his fundraising efforts.

"It may look nuts, but you know what, it's going to be pretty good," Arpaio said.

The sheriff won praise several months later in a tweet from Trump: "Congratulations to @RealSheriffJoe on his successful Cold Case Posse investigation which claims @BarackObama's 'birth certificate' is fake."

Arpaio farmed out the investigation to volunteers on his posse, which is funded through donations, in anticipation of criticism he was throwing away taxpayer money.

In 2012, he said the investigation revealed that there was probable cause to believe Obama's long-form birth certificate was a computer-generated forgery and that the selective service card completed by Obama in 1980 was likely a fraud.

Arpaio insisted he wasn't investigating whether Obama was a U.S. citizen but examining an allegation that the document was fraudulent. But critics say it was a calculated swipe at the identity and legitimacy of the nation's first African-American president.

Though Arpaio promised no taxpayer money would be spent on the investigation, the sheriff sent a deputy to Hawaii to accompany the posse's top investigator. The sheriff said the posse would reimburse his office for the costs of the deputy's travel and time.</s>PHOENIX — Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona has fixated on the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate for more than five years, going so far as to send a deputy and member of his volunteer posse to Hawaii to question officials.

He earned plaudits from Donald Trump and became one of the nation's leading voices on the debunked controversy over Obama's birthplace. Arpaio closed his yearslong investigation Thursday, ending a chapter that critics denounced as a shameless ploy to raise money from his right-wing base.

The news conference from the media-savvy sheriff came three weeks before the end of his 24 years as metro Phoenix's top law enforcer and five weeks before Obama leaves office. He complained to a crowd of about 75 supporters that his claims about the document weren't taken seriously.

"We and anyone else who dared to question the document have been maligned, falsely labeled and grossly criticized," Arpaio said, refusing to take questions from reporters.

The sheriff took up the "birther" mantle as he faced some of his worst legal troubles, including a racial profiling case that discredited his patrols targeting immigrants and a grand jury inquiry into his failed investigations of local political enemies.

He refused to back away from the investigation three months ago when Trump, an Arpaio ally, relented on his claim that Obama wasn't born in the U.S.

Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo, a longtime Arpaio critic, said the investigation was a publicity stunt to raise the sheriff's national political profile and bring in campaign dollars.

"He was trying to throw meat to his base, and that's exactly what he did," Gallardo said. "He threw red meat."

Arpaio was not the only Arizona politician to plunge into the erroneous effort.

The Arizona Legislature passed a bill in 2011 that would have required Obama and other presidential candidates to prove they were U.S. citizens before their names could appear on the ballot. It was vetoed by the GOP governor.

Several Electoral College members even questioned Obama's eligibility to serve as president as they cast their votes for Republican Mitt Romney four years ago.

Arpaio has said he launched the probe after nearly 250 people connected to an Arizona tea-party group requested it. He pressed forward despite aides warning he would be ridiculed.

In the 2014 documentary "The Joe Show," Arpaio was seen brushing aside his publicist's prediction that he would be viewed as a clown. The sheriff said the investigation would help his fundraising efforts.

"It may look nuts, but you know what, it's going to be pretty good," Arpaio said.

The sheriff won praise several months later in a tweet from Trump: "Congratulations to @RealSheriffJoe on his successful Cold Case Posse investigation which claims @BarackObama's 'birth certificate' is fake."

Arpaio farmed out the investigation to volunteers on his posse, which is funded through donations, in anticipation of criticism he was throwing away taxpayer money.

In 2012, he said the investigation revealed that there was probable cause to believe Obama's long-form birth certificate was a computer-generated forgery and that the selective service card completed by Obama in 1980 was likely a fraud.

The facts say otherwise. Hawaii officials repeatedly confirmed Obama's citizenship, and the courts rebuffed a series of lawsuits.

Arpaio insisted he wasn't investigating whether Obama was a U.S. citizen but examining an allegation that the document was fraudulent. But critics say it was a calculated swipe at the identity and legitimacy of the nation's first African-American president.

Though Arpaio promised no taxpayer money would be spent on the investigation, the sheriff sent a deputy to Hawaii to accompany the posse's top investigator. The leader of the posse said it tried to pay back $9,600 for the costs of the deputy's travel and time, but officials declined to accept the money.
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio holds a press conference showing findings from 2 different forensic experts of "9 points of forgery" alleging President Obama's long form birth certificate was forged and also claims to have found the birth certificate used to make the forgery.