Sheriff Joe Arpaio vowed this week that he will continue his investigation into President Obama’s place of birth, years after Obama released his birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii.
“I don’t care where he’s from,” Arpaio told a crowd of approximately 200 Tea Party Patriots in Phoenix on Tuesday, according to a Wednesday report in USA Today. “We are looking at a forged document. Period.”
Arpaio started his investigation in August 2011, months after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gave the so-called “birther” movement mainstream visibility. Obama released an abbreviated version of his birth certificate in 2008 before presenting the full-length document in April 2011. Republican president Donald Trump disavowed any claims that the current president was born outside of the United States in a press conference on Friday.
But for Arpaio, these developments are not enough to relieve his volunteer investigative team’s questions about the outgoing president’s national origins.
“I know all the politicians say, ‘Sheriff, don’t talk about it,'” Arpaio told the group at their recent meeting. “But how can I back down when we started it? I’m not going to just forget it.”
