Has Sheriff Joe Usurped Orly Taitz As America's Most Delusional Racist Birther?

SPECIAL REPORT

The Cold Case Posse Preliminary Report, OR

Shurff Joe's Got Nothing New Under the Arizona Sun

Was unaware that cut-and-pasting WorldNetDaily articles was a "government investigation." — @daveweigel

In August 2011, members of the Surprise Arizona Tea Party petitioned Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona "expressing concern that Obama might not be eligible for Arizona’s presidential ballot." In
September, the Sheriff announced that he would look into birther claims
that President Obama wasn't born in the United States. He assigned one
of his "Cold Case Posses" to investigate. On March 1, 2012, Sheriff
Arpaio held a press conference to release the preliminary report of his
investigation.

TheFogbow.com has examined the report, the claims, and the press conference and concludes that:

1. the "evidence" is actually old, debunked rumors with a few new spins thrown in for spice,
   
   
2. the "investigation" was never treated as an impartial search for evidence,
   
   
3. the press conference was effectively run by World Net Daily, and
   
   
4. there's certainly information that an Attorney General should look into, but it's not about the President.

We'll now examine each of these conclusions in depth.

Additional resources.

Birther Hash: Recycled Rumors

Claims from the press conference:

• The paper document of the birth certificate never existed.
  
  
  • FALSE.
    Reporters at the Press Conference where the Long Form Birth Certificate
    was released were able to handle the paper document and feel the raised
    seal. Reporter Savannah Guthrie posted a picture from her cell phone. The press conference.
    
  • FALSE. Factcheck.org handled and photographed the Short Form Birth Certificate. Here's their coverage.
    
  • FALSE. The Hawaii Department of Health says that LFBC document is authentic and 2 certified paper copies were sent to the President in April, 2011.
    The copies were given to the President's lawyer who hand-carried to the
    White House from Hawaii. One copy was scanned and posted to the White
    House website as well as copied and distributed to the press. One
    certified copy was passed around at the White House conference.
  • Added:
    "A representative with the Hawaii Attorney General's Office said no one
    from the Sheriff's Office ever requested to inspect or collect
    documents related to the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate." AZCentral.com.
    

• The long-form birth certificate was most likely a computer-generated forgery.
  
  
  • FALSE.
    The Hawaii Department of Health says that LFBC document is authentic,
    was produced by photocopying the original record, and the process was witnessed by the Director of the DOH.
    
  • Every
    digitized image downloaded from the internet and opened with Adobe
    Illustrator will appear to have layers. Layers are not caused by a
    forger creating a fraudulent document, they are caused by reading a
    digitized image downloaded and opened with Adobe Illustrator. Every
    Single Time. Every Single Image.
    
  • Our Special Report on The Long Form BC is Not a Forgery: Layers and Illustrator
  • Added: Frank Arduini's Response to Mara Zebest, a debunking of the original WND Report.
  • John Woodman's debunking of the LFBC forgery claims. Videos.
    
  • Computer Forensics expert Dr. Neal Krawetz, publisher of HackerFactor.com's reports. SFBC: June 2008, August 2008, LFBC: April 2011.
    
    
    • “Before
      I begin, I need to point out two critical items for this evaluation.
      First, digital document analysis can detect manipulation, but it cannot
      determine whether the original subject is authentic. The authenticity
      can only be determined by the State of Hawaii, and they already said
      that it is authentic.”

• President
  Obama's Selective Service card was most likely a forgery, revealed by
  an examination of the postal date stamp on the document.
  
  
  • FALSE. Extensive debunking here.
    
  • Doc Conspiracy weighs in.

• Records
  of Immigration and Naturalization Service cards filled out by airplane
  passengers arriving on international flights originating outside the
  United States in the month of August 1961, examined at the National
  Archives in Washington, D.C., are missing records for the week of
  President Obama's birth, including the dates Aug. 1, 1961 through Aug.
  7, 1961.
  
  
  • MISLEADING: The National Archives has some records online, but NOT for any of 1961. It's not just that week that's missing, it's the entire decade. Added: Corsi hasn't disclosed any evidence from the National Archives to support his claim.

• 
  
  • Added: According
    to Mark Zullo at the CCP Press conference, the National Archives
    provided 685 rolls of microfilm containing INS reports of air passengers
    flying into the USA from overseas.
    
    • Jerome Corsi examined the month of August 1961, and the week containg August 1-7 was missing. The report's conclusion?
    • "What does that translate to us? We don’t know if Stanley Ann Dunham, or Mr. Obama as an infant, was on an airplane coming into the country. We don’t know if he was, we don’t know if he isn’t, andwe cannot make that determination. As a result, we still have to entertain information now that he was possibly born abroad."
    • The
      CCP has not provide any further information on this data. We don't know
      if Corsi examined all entry ports, if other dates were missing, how
      complete the records are.
    • Hawaii
      in 1961 had no flights that originated in London or Nairobi or any
      typical path for someone traveling from Kenya. INS information is
      collected at the first airport an overseas flight lands in.

• The
  Hawaii Department of Health has engaged in what Sheriff's investigators
  believe is a systematic effort to hide from public inspection whatever
  original 1961 birth records the Hawaii Department of Health may have in
  their possession.
  
  
  • FALSE. The Hawaii Department of Health has been following Hawaii Statutes to the letter.
    Hawaii law limits who can access records, who can get copies of
    records, and what process someone needs to go through to get copies of
    vital records. President Obama made a special request for his own records, and that was granted.
  • Nothing said at the Cold Case press conference indicates that the investigation ever tried to work with the Hawaii DOH. Added: The Arizona Republic contacted the Hawaii AG's office after the press conference. "A
    representative with the Hawaii Attorney General's Office said no one
    from the Sheriff's Office ever requested to inspect or collect documents
    related to the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate."AZCentral.com.

• Added: There is not a single document that proves Mr. Obama's birth in Hawaii.
  
  • FALSE. There are two contemporary birth announcements from local Hawaii papers. There are two versions of certified birth certificates (short form 2008 and long form 2011), each of which officials in Hawaii have separately attested as accurate and legitimate. There is the Birth Index from the Hawaii DOH listing Barack Obama's name. There is the Dunham/Obama divorce decree. There is a note
    in Barack Obama Sr.'s INS file stating that the child was born in
    Honolulu, HI (FOIA, page 46). There is the school record from Indonesia
    stating that Barack Obama Jr. was born in Hawaii. There is President
    Obama's passport.

• Barack
  Obama visited the house of Tom and Mary Ayers, parents of former
  Weather Underground activist turned education professor Bill Ayers, in
  the mid-1980s.
  
  
  • UNKNOWN. This claim first appeared in September, 2009. Original claim. A
    mail carrier claims to recall meeting Barack Obama at the Ayers home
    over 30 years ago. Whatever its veracity, it has nothing to do with
    President Obama's eligibility or the authenticity of birth certificates.

• Added: "In 2000, the Inspector General issued a report about the rampant problem of birth certificate fraud. And within the opening paragraphs of his report, he states that a birth certificate’s intended purpose was only to register the event of a live birth. Not anything else. And in and of itself, is not creditable information to prove identification or citizenship. There has to be other documentation to be considered. That’s right from the government." Transcript, page 46.
  
  • MISLEADING: Here's the report.
    The context is the use of birth certificates in ID fraud, where people
    get additional documents or benefits using a falsified or fraudulent
    birth certificate. The report correctly says that a birth certificate
    can't be matched to a person without other documentation. But a
    certified birth certificate remains proof that the information on it
    matches what's in the original birth record of a state -- particularly
    when the officials of the state confirm that the information repeatedly.
    It's proof that the person named was born at the loation listed, on the
    date listed, to the parents named.

Searching For What We Already Know About The "Usurper"

• Jerome Corsi published "Where's the Birth Certificate" on May 17, 2011 -- weeks after the President released his Long Form Birth Certificate. Added: Corsi's book was published by WND Books.
  
• Jerome
  Corsi orchestrated the petition to Sheriff Arpaio and actively
  solicited signatures from Sunrise Tea Party in an Aug 17, 2011 meeting.
  His expressed intention was to use Sheriff Arpaio's report to spark a
  Congressional investigation. Video of the meeting.
  
  
  • Corsi
    said in that meeting: "Every single one of the 20 experts that we
    presented in WND wrote to me first ... said I want to show you why the
    document's a forgery ..."
    
• September 16, 2011 -- Arpaio agreed to commission the Cold Case Posse, and Corsi "reports" on it for WND.
  Corsi makes no mention of his involvement with the Suprise Tea Party or
  their petition. "The group also gave to Arpaio a binder containing the
  published reports of 20 experts with established credentials who
  conducted a forensic examination of the computer PDF file published on
  the White House website and the photocopies of the Obama birth
  certificate handed out by the White House to the press during the April
  27 press conference."
  
• As reported in WND, Corsi spent
  18 hours over a two-day period in October 2011 briefing the Cold Case
  Posse on a wide-range of evidence regarding Obama's eligibility. Story.
  
• Jerome Corsi investigated passenger lists at the National Archives, and reported his findings to the Cold Case Posse.
  
• Jerome Corsi appeared at the Cold Case Posse press conference on March 1, 2012 to present the findings of the investigation.
  
• John Woodman, author of "Is Barack Obama’s Birth Certificate a Fraud?" sent
  several messages to the Cold Case Posse offering his expertise and
  analysis of the Long Form Birth Certificate. He was never contacted.
  
• The official report of the Cold Case Posse was prepared by Mara Zebest, who also prepared an "exclusive" analysis for World News Daily in June 2011.
• Mara Zebest is a long-time Birther and PUMA supporter. Examples of her early anti-Obama posts.
• Added: Corsi and Mark Zullo have published the results of the Cold Case Posse's investigation as an e-book: "A
  Question of Eligibility: A Law Enforcement Investigation into Barack
  Obama's Birth Certificate and His Eligibility to be President."
  
• Added: The videos presented at the press conference are hosted by the Tea Party Power Hour. They appear to be narrated by Mark Gillar, host of a Tea
  Party internet-radio show which frequently features Birthers as guests,
  whose website has a banner ad for the Birther Summit, and who has
  previously posted a YouTube video claiming Obama is mentally ill.

The Maricopa County News Daily

• The official report of the Cold Case Posse was prepared by Mara Zebest, who also prepared an "exclusive" analysis for World News Daily (WND) in June 2011.
  
• WND
  was privy to the information to be reported at the press conference
  long before the event. They sent an email linking to an 1100 word
  article about the press conference at 3:11 EST (1:11 MST), eleven
  minutes into the event. They extensively quoted Mike Zullo who hadn't
  yet been introduced when the article was posted.
  
• WND provided live-streaming for the event.
  
• Jerome Corsi, WND reporter, presented a portion of the findings of the investigation.
• Added: The
  Circle of Hype: "It’s been an amazing journey unraveling this story
  against all odds,” said Joseph Farah, founder of WND and WND Books,
  which published both the best-selling hardcover and the e-book followup.
  “Most all the details of the fraudulent birth certificate are in these
  books. Arpaio’s team has done an amazing public service corroborating
  what Corsi and the WND team found long ago against all odds.” Story at WND.

Somebody Needs to Watch Their Back: Attorneys General on Lines 2, 3, and 4

• Has Corsi violated journalistic ethics by writing about an investigation he not only instigated but participated in?
  
• Did
  the Cold Case Posse investigate the Social Security information
  illegaly obtained via E-Verify? Or the Selective Service information
  illegally obtained by changing President Obama's address through the SS
  website?
  
• Did
  Sheriff Arpaio offer to drop the Cold Posse investigation in return for
  the DOJ dropping their investigation of Arpaio's office?
  
• Is
  Sheriff Arpaio trying to smear President Obama in retaliation for
  multiple investigations of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office?
  
• Did Jerome Corsi write articles smearing enemies of Sheriff Arpaio in return for the Cold Case Posse investigation?
  
• Did WND provide their own funds to the Cold Case Posse for the investigation?
  
• Was WND's campaign to raise contributions for the investigation a form of bribery?
  
  
  • "WorldNetDaily has
    done its best to buy its preferred result from Arpaio and his "cold
    case posse." The only question is whether anyone can explain why that's
    not attempted bribery." Story, Huffington Post
• Added: "Are
  Corsi and WND also trying to buy a favorable result by writing fawning
  articles about Arpaio and even erasing him from a story about a lawsuit
  against his department?" Conwebwatch.com
• Added: Did anyone other than birther conspiracists testify before the posse?
• Added: Where are the proceeds for Corsi and Zullo's e-book going?

Additional Resources:

Video from the press conference

Official Report

Press Release

Unofficial Transcript (Warning -- contains nuts.)

Obama Conspiracy Theories Blog launches investigation into Sheriff Joe’s “Cold Case Posse”

Press Coverage, from Doc Conspiracy

Document Forensics: Physical and Digital, The Difference and Varied Methodologies by Everalm