Sheriff Joe Arpaio: I'm still investigating President Barack Obama's birth certificate

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday vowed to the Surprise Tea Party Patriots, the group that five years ago petitioned him to investigate President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, that he was continuing the inquiry.

“I’m not going to give up, and we’re looking into it,” he said. “I don’t know how it’s going to turn out.”

For Arpaio, last week’s statement by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that Obama was born in this country had no weight on his volunteer posse's work.

“I don’t care where he’s from,” Arpaio told the crowd of about 200. “We are looking at a forged document. Period.”

Arpaio started his investigation in August 2011, months after Trump raised the issue. In April of that year, Obama held a news conference and posted an image of his birth certificate on the White House website.

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“I had nothing to do with Trump on the birth certificate,” Arpaio told the crowd. “We did it on our own, because of you guys.”

The Surprise Tea Party asked Arpaio to investigate the birth certificate in a letter dated Aug. 20, 2011.

“They’re the ones that got me stuck in this thing,” Arpaio said in a brief interview before walking into the meeting room in the Sun City West Foundation Plaza.

Arpaio received the letter three days after Jerome Corsi, an author and reporter for World Net Daily, spoke to the Surprise Tea Party about his doubts on Obama’s birth records.

On that day, according to a copy of the letter sent to Arpaio, the group gathered 242 signatures on a petition asking Arpaio to investigate whether Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery.

Arpaio began the investigation that week. It has continued since.

“I know all the politicians say, ‘Sheriff, don’t talk about it,’ ” he told the crowd. “But how can I back down when we started it? I’m not going to just forget it.”

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Mike Zullo, the lead investigator on the case and commander of Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse, told the crowd that he knew Trump’s statement was a “punch in the gut, because it was unexpected.”

Zullo said he thought Trump’s statement was “strategic.”

“It’s not going to deter us,” Zullo said. “It’s not going to stop us. I am closer than ever.”

Zullo, however, said that he was not sure whether Obama was not born in the United States. He also said an unnamed official high up in Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, the hospital listed on Obama's birth certificate, has “assured me that birth never took place there, and I believe him.”

Trump said Friday that he believed Obama was born in the United States. He has not elaborated on what led him to this conclusion.

In a statement, his campaign said that Trump successfully ended the issue when Obama released his birth certificate in 2011.

“Having successfully obtained President Obama’s birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States,” reads the statement on Trump’s website.

State Rep. Phil Lovas, a Peoria Republican and director of the Trump campaign in Arizona, said in a brief interview that the Trump statement speaks for itself.

Lovas said he, personally, believes that Obama’s birth certificate is real.

“I believe it is, but I haven’t examined it,” Lovas said before addressing meeting attendees.

Jeff Lichter, who was among the Surprise Tea Party Patriots who signed the letter asking Arpaio for the investigation, demurred when asked about Trump’s statement.

“I don’t want to say anything that hurts Trump,” Lichter said before the meeting began. “I don’t want to say anything that makes national news.”

But during a presentation to the Surprise Tea Party Patriots, Lichter said that, when he and two state lawmakers traveled to New York in April 2011 and met with Trump in Trump Tower, the businessman told them he anticipated Obama would be releasing a fake birth certificate.

“My sources in D.C. are telling me there is going to be a fake birth certificate,” Lichter quoted Trump as saying.

Barb Heller, 59, of Glendale, who attended the meeting, said that she doesn’t see a conflict between the birth certificate investigation and Trump’s statement.

“He said he was born in the United States,” Heller said before the meeting. “He didn’t say it was a true document.”

Roberts: Arpaio's birther quest to continue. Really