Bush White House strategist and leading Republican Karl Rove says that a new document purportedly showing President Barack Obama to have been born in Kenya is probably a fake. Most liberal bloggers are also calling it bogus. Even worse for the birther movement, the founder of Free Republic doesn't think it passes the smell test either. The man credited with engineering George W. Bush's two terms in the White House distanced himself from the birther movement Monday, sending out a Tweet declaring that what appears to be a Kenyan birth certificate -- made public by attorney Orly Taitz, a leader of the birther movement -- is "likely a forgery."
Since Sunday, the birther community -- the political fringe group fighting to prove that Barack Obama isn't eligible to be president because he wasn't born in the United States -- has been vigorously debating the validity of a document that appears to be a Kenyan birth certificate stating that Barack Obama was born at the Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya.
Bloggers and media watchdog groups quickly moved to debunk the document, with Jeremy Schulman at Media Matters and David Waldman at Daily Kos pointing out that the document refers to the "Republic of Kenya," a country that came into existence on Dec. 12, 1964. But the document appears to have been issued by the "Office of the Principal Registrar, Coast Province, Republic of Kenya" on February 17, 1964 -- nearly a year before the Republic of Kenya came into being.
Within hours of the document's release, a debate broke out at conservative news forums over whether the document could possibly be authentic.
At the Free Republic forum, some described it as a "total hoax," while others suggested it's "panic time" at the White House.
Karl Rove, the former strategist for President George W. Bush, stepped into the fray Monday morning as well, sending a Tweet stating that the Kenyan birth certificate is "likely a forgery."
David Weigel at the Washington Independent suggested that Rove's Tweet is a signal that the ongoing conspiracy theories over Obama's place of birth -- despite repeated assurances from the state of Hawaii that Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate is authentic and the 44th president was, indeed, born on American soil -- are becoming an embarrassment to the conservative political establishment.
According to the conservative news site WorldNetDaily, Taitz has filed a motion in federal court to have the "Kenyan birth certificate" authenticated.
Last week, a counterfeit document purporting to be Obama's Kenyan birth certificate made the rounds of the Internet, but was quickly determined to be fraudulent. The new document released by Taitz bears none of the obvious traits of a hoax.
Taitz told WND that the document came from an anonymous source who doesn't want his name known because "he's afraid for his life."
Taitz's motion, filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, requests the purported evidence of Obama's birth both the alleged birth certificate and foreign records not yet obtained be preserved from destruction, asks for permission to legally request documents from Kenya and seeks a subpoena for deposition from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. At the Washington Independent, David Weigel brings up several interesting points about the Kenyan document:
- It records Barack Obama Srs age as 26. Obama Sr was born in 1936; his son was born in 1961.
- Its publication date is February 17, 1964, but it purports be a document of the Republic of Kenya. Kenya did not become a Republic until December 12, 1964, a year after it won independence from Great Britain.
- Its signed by registrar E.F. Lavender. Earth Friendly Lavender is a kind of detergent, and government officials who use vanity initials on official documents are, to put it mildly, rare. At Free Republic, founder Jim Robinson asks if it's fake for the above reasons, as David Weigel notes at the Washington Independent.