Former lawman and now-Senate candidate Joe Arpaio declared Wednesday he is "not gonna back down" on the discredited claim President Barack Obama's birth certificate is a fake.
In an interview with WABC radio hosts Rita Cosby and Curtis Sliwa, the ex-Arizona sheriff said he considers the issue a mission whether or not he wins the Senate seat held by retiring Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.
"I'm not gonna back down on this," he said. "I don't care if I lose elections or anything."
"I'm going to tell you again that that document is a forgery . . . I want to get it to Congress. I want to get it to Congress so they can pass some type of law, regulation, that when somebody runs for president, you oughta check their background, so this won't happen again."
"Why doesn't somebody look at it [the birth certificate] and say, 'You're wrong?'" he said. "Why wouldn't somebody, when you bring in a forged government document, and you have proof, and nobody will look at it?"
Arpaio also claimed he has new details on the issue.
"We came up with some more, new information, not that we need it, but you'll hear more about it," he said, without elaborating.
Arpaio — who President Donald Trump pardoned for a criminal contempt conviction for violating the terms of a 2011 court order in a racial profiling case — called the president "the first hero that I ever had."
"In 75 years, I've never found a hero, but I found him," he said.
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