Trump on Birtherism: Wrong, and Wrong
Again, if there is evidence that Clinton or her campaign had something to do with the origins of the so-called birther movement, we’ve yet to see it. And Trump has never offered any proof.
Trump is also wrong to say he “finished” what he called the “birther controversy.” The issue was long settled, as we wrote repeatedly, even before Trump prominently injected himself into the birther movement in April 2011, as he was mulling a presidential run.
Back in 2008, the Obama campaign had made public the official birth certificate issued by the state of Hawaii. FactCheck.org staffers touched, examined and photographed that document, as we wrote in our “Born in the U.S.A.” article. Trump claimed in 2011 that the official “Certification of Live Birth” that Obama produced in 2008 was “not a birth certificate,” but we noted then that he was wrong. The U.S. Department of State uses “birth certificate” as a generic term to include the official Hawaii document, which satisfies legal requirements for proving citizenship and obtaining a passport.
And there was more evidence than that.