Obama Birth Certificate Investigation Lacks Credibility

by Bob Quasius (note: updated after DOJ filed a lawsuit against Arpaio, and reading the book Is Barack Obama’s Birth Certificate a Fraud?: A Computer Guy Examines The Evidence For Forgery and speaking in-depth with the author, John Woodman)

By now, unless someone has lived in a cave the last four years, everyone has heard of the controversy about Obama’s birth certificate. This past March (2012), Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced his “volunteer posse” had concluded its investigation of Obama’s birth certificate and selective service registration document. If we take the investigative results at face value, yes indeed there is something fishy about Obama’s documents. Recently I had the opportunity to read Is Barack Obama’s Birth Certificate a Fraud?: A Computer Guy Examines The Evidence For Forgery, and combined with my own background in electrical engineering, image processing, etc. reached much the same conclusions as the author: there is little evidence that Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud, and the claims by Jerome Corsi seem intended to sell books rather than raise legitimate questions about Obama’s birth. Clearly there are questions to be answered, and answers to be questioned.

I am not a fan of Obama. In fact, I think Obama is the worst president in modern U.S. history, surpassing even Jimmy Carter. Obama is ‘Jimmy Carter on steroids’ and we need to rid ourselves of Obama, and just as Jimmy Carter was followed by Ronald Reagan, we need a new president to get this nation back on track. Let’s hope for our nation’s sake our next president will be like ‘Ronald Reagan on steroids.’

As much as I dislike Obama and would like to see him out of the oval office, I cannot give the recent Obama birth certificate controversy much credibility because the investigation was conducted under the auspices of Joe Arpaio. Joe Arpaio has a lengthy history of launching politically motivated investigations of his political enemies. Among Arpaio’s victims are journalists, judges, members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and community leaders, among others. The Department of Justice has just filed a civil lawsuit against Arpaio, and one of their claims is Arpaio’s penchant for politically motivated prosecutions of his critics and even judges who rule against him.

The author of Is Barack Obama’s Birth Certificate a Fraud?: A Computer Guy Examines The Evidence For Forgery even contacted Arpaio’s investigative team and shared his information, book, etc. and amazingly they failed to even return his communications. Arpaio stated they left no stone un-turned, and yet here was evidence that contradicted Corsi and they failed to even follow up!

For years, if you criticized Joe Arpaio you soon found yourself on the wrong end of criminal investigations. In one case, a journalist published a story, and then unmarked vehicles with Mexican license plates came to his home in the middle of the night to arrest him for a minor misdemeanor, which was quickly dismissed by a judge, and clearly was intended to intimidate the journalist. In my opinion, Arpaio is a serial power abuser, with no respect whatsoever for our constitution, part of the ‘rule of law’ governing this nation.

Often arrests of Arpaio critics were quickly dismissed by judges as baseless, and in many cases Arpaio and his partner, former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, were unable to convince grand juries to indict. Many criminal law attorneys will tell you that generally speaking, prosecutors can get most grand juries to indict even a ‘ham sandwich.’ It’s rare that grand juries fail to indict, yet many grand juries saw right through the flimsiness of cases against Arpaio critics.

As a consequence of these politically motivated and baseless prosecutions, Maricopa County taxpayers may end up paying tens of millions in damages to victims of malicious prosecutions. During the last years of the Bush administration, the DOJ launched an investigation into these alleged abuses of power, and a grand jury has been empaneled. Andrew Thomas, the former Maricopa County Attorney is in deep trouble, and may well lose his law license for his role in this scheme. Yes, Joe Arpaio may himself be indicted for abusing his power under color of law. Clearly, any investigation of Arpaio critics or political enemies conducted under the auspices of Joe Arpaio is immediately clouded by questions about the integrity of the investigation.

Now, it has emerged that Mike Zullo, the lead investigator from Arpaio’s “volunteer posse”, has co-authored a book with Jerome Corsi and will split the profits with Corsi. Question: if the investigator had concluded Obama’s documents were authentic, would he be able to sell a book? I doubt it. The fact that Mr. Zullo is profiting off of his investigation naturally leads us to question his credibility as well.

Jerome Corsi has written extensively about various conspiracy theories, for example Corsi authored “The Late Great U.S.A.: The Coming Merger With Mexico and Canada“, claiming the Bush administration was plotting a “North American Union” that would merge Mexico, Canada, and the U.S., without ever obtaining the approval of Congress, even establishing a European style currency to be known as the “amero.” This is one of the most absurd conspiracy theories I have ever heard, very similar to another conspiracy theory called “reconquista”, which holds that undocumented immigrants come to the U.S. to procreate, and eventually create Hispanic majorities in the Southwest and return the Southwest to Mexico. Of course, the “reconquista” theory makes the ridiculous assumption that Mexican-American immigrants and their offspring never assimilate and want to be part of the very nation they fled in search of a better life. Corsi provided many of the materials for the investigation. I don’t find Corsi to be a credible individual, as he writes sensational books making a wide range of claims, some of which are not very credible.

Any investigation into whether any state laws were violated by the Obama campaign should be performed by Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne and the state police, or by another sheriff, which should NOT be Paul Babeu, who also lacks credibility.

(note: this blog, as with all blog postings with a byline, is my personal opinion, and not the official position of Cafe Con Leche Republicans)