Sheriff Joe's posse: 'Hawaii duped Arizona'
Jerome R. Corsi
Letter on Obama eligibility 'doesn’t verify anything of significance'
“Hawaii duped Arizona” in its response to Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett’s request to verify Barack Obama’s eligibility for the 2012 election, charges the lead investigator of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse.
“We have developed incontrovertible proof that the verification provided by the Hawaii Department of Health to Arizona’s secretary of state on May 22 really doesn’t verify anything of significance,” said Mike Zullo, who is in Hawaii to follow up on his team’s initial findings concerning Obama’s birth record.
As WND reported, after more than eight weeks of pressing Hawaii’s Department of Health, Bennett said Tuesday that he finally received information that proves Obama’s American birth and satisfies Arizona’s requirements for placing the president on the ballot.
Zullo – who met with Hawaii Department of Health officials in Honolulu the day before the letter to Bennett was issued – said that after he returns to Phoenix to brief Arpaio, the sheriff will schedule a press conference “at the earliest possible date in June.”
Zullo explained his team will need time to prepare the extensive new information developed since Arpaio’s March 1 press conference. The sheriff announced at that time that his posse had found probable cause that the Obama birth record released by the White House one year ago and Obama’s Selective Service registration form are forgeries.
Zullo declined to detail the new information but pointed to what he considered “obvious defects” in the May 22 letter the Hawaii Department of Health sent to Bennett:
- Tuesday’s letter, he said, fails to identify or list President Obama’s date of birth, even though the letter’s apparent purpose was for the Hawaii Department of Health to verify Obama was born in Hawaii.
- To the right of the registrar’s stamp on the letter appear the initials “gk,” suggesting that Hawaii Department of Health Registrar Alvin Onaka did not apply the registrar’s stamp himself.
“I suspect these defects are not accidental,” Zullo said. “My suspicion is that top officials in the Hawaii DOH and the Hawaii Attorney General’s office created a defective document that could be disclaimed rather than take the time to produce a thoroughly proofread and officially certified legally binding state document.”
Zullo told WND that Onaka refused to meet with him and his investigators when they appeared this week at the downtown Honolulu headquarters of the Hawaii Department of Health.
“Either Onaka refused to initial his registrar’s stamp or the Hawaii DOH is not sufficiently competent to produce a legally valid document,” Zullo concluded. “But either way, the cover-up appears alive and well in Hawaii.”
Zullo insisted defects in the Hawaii letter were not limited to what might be explained as clerical errors or Hawaii DOH operating policies.
“The Hawaii DOH letter is nothing more than a highly lawyered, cleverly crafted document that we can now prove does not verify what it appears to verify,” he said. “At Sheriff Arpaio’s next press conference we will be able to prove that the Hawaii DOH has actually refused to verify either that Obama was born in Hawaii or that the long-form birth-certificate released by the White House on April 27, 2011, is an authentic document.”
As WND reported, Arpaio launched his investigation last September after 250 Maricopa County residents belonging to the Surprise, Ariz., Tea Party presented him with a petition claiming their voting rights would be compromised if Obama used a forged birth certificate to win a place on the 2012 Arizona presidential ballot.
Political pressure
Zullo affirmed to WND that he believes Hawaii has outsmarted Bennett.
“To begin with, it was no surprise to me that Bennett buckled to political pressure,” Zullo said.
Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett
“I knew when I met with Mr. Bennett last week in Phoenix, before we left for Hawaii, that he was desperately trying to get out of the political corner he had painted himself into.”
Zullo told WND that in an approximately hour-long meeting May 15 in Bennett’s Phoenix government office, the secretary of state said he fully expected there would be no problem getting the Hawaii government to verify that Obama was born in Hawaii.
“Bennett obviously believed Obama was telling the truth,” Zullo said. “He was shocked when Hawaii didn’t immediately issue the verification. As it dragged on into weeks, Bennett became desperate to do whatever Hawaii asked to get what amounts to even this meaningless letter.”
Zullo explained to WND that immediately following his meeting with Bennett, he returned to MCSO headquarters and briefed Arpaio.
“I told the sheriff that I suspected Bennett would reach over backwards in a desperate attempt to get some form of document from the Hawaii Health Department in written form, so he could managed to come out of the political problem he had created for himself,” Zullo said.
“In my meeting with Sheriff Arpaio, I disclosed my belief that Secretary of State Bennett would confer with Hawaii’s attorney general to draft a second, probably watered-down letter of request from Hawaii,” he continued.
Zullo said it was “no shock to me or Sheriff Arpaio when the verification was released, and we believe the timing is suspect in that the release of the verification came one day after MCSO met with Hawaii Department of Health officials in Honolulu.”
In his meeting with Zullo, Bennett admitted that he never would have made the promise in writing to members of the Surprise Tea Party if he thought there might be a problem getting the verification.
“My impression was that Bennett wanted to appear sympathetic to the tea party group to win their political favor, but that he guessed wrong, calculating that Hawaii was telling the truth about Obama’s birth and had nothing to hide,” Zullo said. “Bennett was dumbfounded when Hawaii hesitated.”
Zullo told WND that his purpose in requesting the meeting with Bennett was to share with the Arizona secretary of state recent developments in the MCSO law enforcement investigation into Obama’s birth.
“I was shocked to find out Bennett knew virtually nothing about our investigation – only what he read in the newspapers,” Zullo said.
He added that Bennett did not appear interested in understanding the serious information the investigation had developed.
“When I tried to bring him up to speed, it became apparent the 20 minutes remaining in the meeting was not going to be enough time to explain even the key points of the investigation,” Zullo said.
“I felt Bennett was totally ignorant of what I was talking about, and he really didn’t care.”
Zullo said he left Bennett’s office fully convinced the secretary of state would capitulate to pressure by Arizona and national Republican Party officials, including Sen. John McCain.
Bennett has declared his desire to run for Arizona governor. He is currently the co-chairman of Gov. Mitt Romney’s Arizona presidential campaign.
Read the preliminary findings of Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse investigation.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/05/sheriff-joes-posse-hawaii-duped-arizona/print/