Photos claim to show Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate. Fact Check

A photo claims to show the real birth certificate of former President Barack Obama, and presents itself as proof that Obama was born in Mombasa in Kenya, and as such was always ineligible to be President of the United States.

FALSE

One of the constitutional requirements to be President of the United States is that a person must be a naturally born US citizen. One of the most prolific conspiracy theories directed as President Obama – even once promoted by Obama’s successor, President Trump – was that Obama was born a citizen of Kenya, and thus never eligible to be President of the United States.

There is a high volume of content online that claims to prove these assertions, though nearly all fail to live up to even a cursory amount of scrutiny. Perhaps one of the most prolific examples of “evidence” offered by conspiracy theories is two photographs purporting to show a (nearly) identical copy of Obama’s birth certificate, with Mombasa Kenya listed as the place of birth. One such version was tweeted by Obama’s half brother, Malik Obama.

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The first (below) originated from 2009 by Dr. Orly Taitz, a conspiracy theorist that has long maintained that the Barack Obama was born in Kenya. She claimed at the time to have obtained the photo of the certificate from an “anonymous source”. (We refer to this as the Taitz copy.)

The Taitz copy was thoroughly debunked soon after she posted it, with sceptics noting that despite being dated 17th February 1964, the Republic of Kenya was not officially titled a Republic until December 1964, and as such official documents would not likely carry the word Republic at the time it was authored. Additionally Obama’s father’s age is listed incorrectly. The document claims he was 26 years old. However Obama Snr. would have celebrated his 25th birthday a few weeks before Barack Obama being born.

But perhaps most convincingly of all, the Taitz copy was actually based on a template from an Australian birth certificate, which was discovered online by fact checkers. The original birth certificate (below) actually belonged to a David Jeffrey Bomford, who was born in South Australia. Much of Bomford’s information was edited out and replaced with fake information. After finding other birth certificates from South Australia, we can confirm this is indeed the template used there, and not in Kenya.

You can see from the genuine birth certificate of Bomford above that the template is identical to the Taitz copy claiming to show Obama’s certificate. It’s unlikely that South Australia and Kenya would be using the same birth certificate templates, but what’s more, even details like the name of the Registrar have only been slightly altered from Bomford’s original certificate. For example, on Bomford’s birth certificate, the registrar is listed as G. F. Lavender, while on the Taitz copy it is listed as E. F. Lavender. The document number and numbers at the top of the page are also identical. This is more than enough to demonstrate that the Taitz copy claiming to show Obama’s birth certificate is just a forgery based on an already existing Australian birth certificate.

However another forgery is also being passed around that itself is based on the Taitz copy. This version (below) has been tweeted by Malik Obama, Obama’s half-brother, so it inevitably gained plenty of traction on social media. (Malik Obama is an ardent Trump supporter.)

 
However this forgery (we call this the Malik copy) is arguably worse, since it is a direct duplicate of Bomford’s birth certificate. Even the creases on the paper are a direct match. Like the Taitz copy, the Malik copy has just replaced Bomford’s details with Obama details, again claiming he was born in Mombasa.

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However the Malik copy does have some subtle differences from the Taitz copy, such as the date of the document on the Malik copy is August 1961 while the Taitz copy is dated February 1964. Again this makes the Malik copy an inferior forgery, since as we stated above, Kenya did not officially adopt the title of Republic until the end of 1964, so certainly would not have used it on a document made in 1961.

Also, it is worth noting that this isn’t the first time Malik Obama has published false documents claiming to show Barack Obama’s birth certificate. He has previously tweeted out different documents claiming to show his half-brother’s birth certificate.

The Taitz copy and Malik copy are both forgeries based on an Australian birth certificate found online. There is no evidence that template was used in Kenya but there are other birth certificates online that show it was used in South Australia.