Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories
During Barack Obama's campaign for president in 2008, throughout his presidency and afterwards, there was extensive news coverage of Obama's religious preference, birthplace, and of the individuals questioning his religious belief and citizenshipefforts eventually known as the "birther movement", or birtherism, names by which it is widely referred to across media. The movement falsely asserted Obama was ineligible to be President of the United States because he was not a natural-born citizen of the United States as required by Article Two of the Constitution. Studies have found these birther conspiracy theories to be most firmly held by Republicans strong in both political knowledge and racial resentment.
Theories alleged that Obama's published birth certificate was a forgerythat his actual birthplace was not Hawaii but Kenya. Other theories alleged that Obama became a citizen of Indonesia in childhood, thereby losing his U.S. citizenship. Still others claimed that Obama was not a natural-born U.S. citizen because he was born a dual citizen. A number of political commentators have characterized these various claims as a racist reaction to Obama's status as the first African-American president of the United States.
These claims were promoted by fringe theorists, including businessman and television personality Donald Trump, who would later succeed Obama as president. Some theorists sought court rulings to declare Obama ineligible to take office, or to grant access to various documents which they claimed would support such ineligibility; none of these efforts succeeded. Some political opponents, especially in the Republican Party, expressed skepticism about Obama's citizenship or were unwilling to acknowledge it; others proposed legislation that would require presidential candidates to provide proof of eligibility.
Theories have persisted despite Obama's pre-election release of his official Hawaiian birth certificate in 2008, confirmation by the Hawaii Department of Health based on the original documents, the April 2011 release of a certified copy of Obama's original Certificate of Live Birth, and contemporaneous birth announcements published in Hawaii newspapers. Polls conducted in 2010 suggested that at least 25% of adult Americans said that they doubted Obama's U.S. birth, and a May 2011 Gallup poll found that the percentage had fallen to 13% of American adults. The fall was attributed to Obama's release of the long form in April 2011.
Background
Early life of Barack Obama
People who express doubts about Obama's eligibility or reject details about his early life are often informally called "birthers", a term that parallels the nickname "truthers" for adherents of 9/11 conspiracy theories. These conspiracy theorists reject at least some aspects of his early life:Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at the Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Ann Dunham, from Wichita, Kansas, and her husband Barack Obama Sr., a Luo from Nyang'oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, who was attending the University of Hawaii. Birth notices for Barack Obama were published in The Honolulu Advertiser on August 13 and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on August 14, 1961. Obama's father's immigration file also clearly states Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. One of his high school teachers, who was acquainted with his mother at the time, remembered hearing about the day of his birth.
Obama's parents were divorced in 1964. He attended kindergarten in 1966–1967 at Noelani Elementary School in Honolulu. In 1967, his mother married Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro, who was also attending the University of Hawaii, and the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Obama attended the Catholic St. Francis of Assisi School before transferring to State Elementary School Menteng 01, an elite Indonesian public school in Menteng. As a child in Indonesia, Obama was called "Barry Soetoro", reflecting his stepfather's surname, or "Barry Obama", using his father's surname. When he was ten years old, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, and has resided continuously in the United States since 1971.
Origins of the claims
In 1991, Obama's literary agency, Acton & Dystel, printed a promotional booklet which misidentified Obama's birthplace, and stated that Obama was "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii". This error was later included in a biography that remained posted to their website until April 2007. The booklet's editor said that this incorrect information, which was not widely discovered until 2012, had been her mistake and not based on anything provided to her agency by Obama.Conspiracy theories about Obama's religion appeared at least as early as his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign in a press release by Illinois political candidate Andy Martin, and, according to a Los Angeles Times editorial, as internet rumors.
According to Politico, rumors Obama was not born in Hawaii began when Obama's popularity proved a threat to Hillary Clinton. Politico wrote: "That theory first emerged in the spring of 2008..." The earliest known appearance of the notion on a conservative blogger website was March 5, 2008, and it was not about his birth, but was about "dual citizenship or split loyalties". In April of that year, some supporters of Hillary Clinton circulated anonymous chain emails repeating the same rumor; among them was an Iowa campaign volunteer, who was fired when the story emerged. These and numerous other chain e-mails during the subsequent presidential election circulated false rumors about Obama's origin, religion, and birth certificate.
On June 9, 2008, Jim Geraghty of the conservative website National Review Online suggested that Obama release his birth certificate. Geraghty wrote that releasing his birth certificate could debunk several false rumors circulating on the Internet, namely: that his middle name was originally Muhammad rather than Hussein; that his mother had originally named him "Barry" rather than "Barack"; and that Barack Obama Sr. was not his biological father, as well as the rumor that Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen.
In August 2008, Philip J. Berg, a former member of the Democratic State Committee of Pennsylvania, brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against Obama, which alleged "that Obama was born in Mombasa, Kenya."
In October 2008, an NPR article referred to "Kenyan-born" Senator Barack Obama. Also that month, anonymous e-mails circulated claiming that the Associated Press had reported Obama was "Kenyan-born". The claims were based on an AP story that had appeared five years earlier in a Kenyan publication, The Standard. The rumor-checking website Snopes found that the headline and lead-in sentence describing Obama as born in Kenya and misspelling his first name had been added by the Kenyan newspaper and did not appear in the story issued by the AP or in any other contemporary newspaper that picked up the AP story.
In 2012, the far-right website Breitbart published a copy of the promotional booklet printed by Acton & Dystel in 1991.
Release of the birth certificates
Short form, 2008
On June 12, 2008, Obama's campaign responded to the rumors by posting an image of Obama's birth certificate on the "Fight the Smears" website.The image is a scan of a laser-printed document obtained from and certified by the Hawaii Department of Health on June 6, 2007. It is a "Certification of Live Birth", sometimes referred to as a short form birth certificate, and contains less information than the longer "Certificate of Live Birth", which Hawaii no longer issues. Asked about this, Hawaiian Department of Health spokeswoman Janice Okubo explained that Hawaii stopped issuing the longer "Certificate" in 2001 when their birth records were "put into electronic files for consistent reporting", and therefore Hawaii "does not have a short-form or long-form certificate". A "record of live birth", partially handwritten and partially typed, was created and submitted in 1961 when Obama was born, and is "located in a bound volume in a file cabinet on the first floor of the state Department of Health". The document was used to create the state's electronic records, and has been examined by state officials multiple times since the controversy began.
In releasing the certificate, the Obama website declared that the rumors "aren't actually about that piece of paperthey're about manipulating people into thinking Barack is not an American citizen." The campaign also provided the Daily Kos blog with a copy of the document. Referring to this release, National Review columnist Jim Geraghty, wrote on June 12, 2008:
Frequent arguments of those questioning Obama's eligibility related to the fact that he did not originally release a copy of his "original" or "long form" birth certificate, but rather a "short form" version that did not include all of the information given on 1961 Hawaii-issued birth certificates. It was claimed that the use of the term "certification of live birth" on the first document means it is not equivalent to a "birth certificate". These arguments have been debunked numerous times by media investigations, every judicial forum that has addressed the matter, and Hawaiian government officialsamong whom a consensus has been reached that the document released by the Obama campaign is indeed his official birth certificate. The director of the state Department of Human Health confirmed that the state "has Senator Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures". The short form is "prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding."
Arizona Tea Party leader and legislator Kelly Townsend pressed legislation to stop Obama from appearing on the ballot in the 2012 election in Arizona without providing proof of birth and also approached Donald Trump with the conspiracy.