It turns out Barack Obama is . . . is . . . a citizen. The White House has released President Obama’s long-form birth certificate to put the growing controversy to rest over his birth. Many of us have been critical of the birther conspiracy theories. However, I am not sure why the White House did not do this earlier since it addresses the allegations fully. It will be interesting to see that, now that Obama has produced the certificate, if the movement for state ballot laws declines. While it has been repeatedly stated that the laws are not about Obama, but we will see.

The long-form clearly states the date and other information. It also includes the name of Obama’s father — a focus of recent suggestions that the reason for withholding the document was the name of a different man or the inclusion of Muslim for religion.

Donald Trump immediately took credit for the disclosure stating, “Today, I’m very proud of myself, because I’ve accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish,” Trump told reporters. “Why he didn’t do it when everybody else was asking for it, I don’t know. But I am really honored, frankly, to have played such a big role in hopefully, hopefully getting rid of this issue.”

I am not sure why the White House held on to the document. One theory could be that they knew it would blow up in the faces of Obama’s critics. However, it has served to rally critics for years. Those critics are not likely to register with the DNC now. They are likely to move on to other claims against Obama.

Perhaps now that he clearly was born in Hawaii, they will now claim that his is part of the Hawaiian royalty and thus making him ineligible as the holder of a foreign ennoblement.

Here are the two pages: Obama_birth_certificate and birth-certificate-long-form

Jonathan Turley