After nearly 24 years as Maricopa County Sheriff, the right-wing Arizona lawman known for forcing inmates into pink underwear and desert tents, lost his bid for re-election, even as Donald Trump won the presidency. Now, as the birther-in-chief prepares to succeed the nation’s first African-American president, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is leaving office with one final public appeal to press the case Barack Obama was born outside of the United States.

Arpaio held a press conference Thursday afternoon to discuss the “newest revelations” in his long-running “investigation” into Obama’s birth certificate.

The investigation concluded that the birth certificate was a “fraudulently created document, which has been represented as an official copy of the original birth certificate of President Obama,” Arpaio claimed. “We and anyone else who dare to question the document have been maligned, falsely labeled, grossly criticized in the bulk of the media, certain internet sources, for years.”

For five years, Arpaio has been peddling the false birther myth that elevated Trump to the White House. Ahead of the 2012 election, Arpaio dispatched a deputy and his volunteer posse to Hawaii as part of his so-called criminal investigation into Obama’s birth certificate.

“We feel that that document is a forgery,” Arpaio said when officials informed his team that the birth certificate released by the White House was authentic. “We’re trying to figure out who did it. That’s good police work.”

Source: Salon.com