Yesterday, disgraced Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio claimed that President Obama’s birth certificate is a “a fraudulently created document that has been represented as an official copy of the original”:
Flanked by mustachioed Maricopa County Chief Investigator Mike Zullo, Arpaio insisted he was not interested in where President Obama was born (America) but rather, “we were going to investigate a possibly forged document.”
[…]
Citing nine points of alleged forgery in President Obama’s birth certificate confirmed, he claimed, by two separate forensic investigations, Zullo concluded that “we’re pretty confident with these results.”
Nope, you haven’t stumbled on a circa-2012 article. Despite having just days left in office after getting his rear soundly handed to him this past November, Arpaio remains obsessed with this totally debunked, racist crap.
You’d think Arpaio has much bigger things to worry about — the soon-to-be-ex sheriff faces up to six months in the slammer after getting officially charged with criminal contempt of court for violating a federal judge’s order in a racial profiling case:
Snow already declared Arpaio and Sheridan guilty of civil contempt of his court in May of this year, finding that the two men had “deliberately” and “willfully” defied his orders in the ACLU’s landmark civil-rights case Melendres v. Arpaio, in which Snow had found Arpaio and the MCSO at fault for widespread racial profiling of Latinos.
Or, maybe now that Arpaio’s facing unemployment for the first time in decades, perhaps he’s angling for a new government job? Arpaio was a solid supporter of Donald Trump’s candidacy, yet another long-time Birther who rode this conspiracy theory all the way to the White House.
According to Fusion, “the next step in [Arpaio’s] ‘investigation’ is to turn his results over to federal authorities.” Hopefully that’s his own donor money he’s wasting, after suggesting earlier this year he may have spent taxpayer money on this.
But as The Atlantic notes, “those spots are almost filled, and the criminal case against Arpaio is ramping up.”
There’s no telling where Arpaio will be this time next year, but one thing is for certain. There will be a new sheriff in Maricopa County, and hopefully one that will actually stick to doing his job.
