Thaindian News

WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) — U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday released his long form birth certificate in an attempt to stop ongoing conspiracy theories about his place of birth.

Conspiracy theories regarding Obama’s citizenship first emerged in 2008 during his election campaign, alleging that he is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and therefore is not eligible to be President under Article Two of the United States Constitution. Some claim Obama was born in Kenya, not in Hawaii as is on his certification of live birth.

The issue again received widespread media coverage in the United States in recent weeks as Republican Donald Trump repeatedly called on Obama to release the documents. It led to a new debate over the issue.

But Obama’s campaign team had already released a certificate of live birth in 2008 and posted it to their campaign website. Nonetheless, critics demanded to see the long form version of the document.

“When any citizen born in Hawaii requests their birth certificate, they receive exactly what the President received,” Dan Pfeiffer, the White House Communications Director, said on Wednesday, referring to the certificate of live birth that was released in 2008. “In fact, the document posted on the campaign website is what Hawaiians use to get a driver’s license from the state and the document recognized by the Federal Government and the courts for all legal purposes. That’s because it is the birth certificate. This is not and should not be an open question.”

Pfeiffer said Obama does not believe the distraction over his birthplace is good for the country, and therefore he decided to release it. “It may have been good politics and good TV, but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country,” he said.

He added: “At a time of great consequence for this country - when we should be debating how we win the future, reduce our deficit, deal with high gas prices, and bring stability to the Middle East, Washington, DC, was once again distracted by a fake issue. The President’s hope is that with this step, we can move on to debating the bigger issues that matter to the American people and the future of the country.”

Obama later commented on the issue during a White House news conference in which he said that he was “puzzled” as to why it remained an issue for so long. “We’ve had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital,” he said.

The president said he was surprised to see earlier this month that the headlines were focused on his place of birth, rather than one of his speeches on his budget. “During that entire week the dominant news story wasn’t about these huge, monumental choices that we’re going to have to make as a nation. It was about my birth certificate.”

In response to the release of Obama’s long form birth certificate, Trump said he hoped the document is real and took credit for achieving the release of it. The White House nor Obama did not specifically name Trump, who is considering a run for the White House.