Former Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio resurfaced an unfounded conspiracy theory on Wednesday that former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a “forgery” and said Congress should pass a law requiring such documents to be examined.
“I’m going to tell you again that that document is a forgery document,” Arpaio told WABC’s Rita Cosby. “And nobody will touch it.”
“I wanted to get it to Congress so they can pass some type of law — regulation — that when somebody runs for president you ought to check their background, so this won’t happen again,” he added. “But I can’t get anybody — anybody — to even look at it.”
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Arpaio announced on Tuesday that he will seek the Republican nomination in Arizona’s 2018 Senate race. He told Cosby on Wednesday that he would raise the issue of Obama’s birth certificate in Congress.
Arpaio has long been a controversial political figure, particularly for his hard-line views on immigration and law enforcement. He served as Maricopa County sheriff for nearly 25 years before losing his reelection bid in 2016.
President Trump pardoned the former sheriff last year after he was convicted of ignoring a federal court’s order to stop using racial profiling in law enforcement.
The conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the U.S. and that his birth certified was fraudulent has been widely debunked. Trump himself propagated the theory for years, and a New York Times article published in November reported that Trump has continued to question the birth certificate’s legitimacy.