Fact Check

Kenya: Authorities Release Barack Obama's 'Real' Birth Certificate

Has the Kenyan government released '11 exclusive documents' suggesting that Barack Obama was born in that country?

David Mikkelson

Published May 30, 2014

Claim:   The Kenyan government has released "11 exclusive documents" suggesting that Barack Obama was born in that country.

FALSE

Example:   [Collected via e-mail, May 2014]


Is this true? "Kenya: Authorities Release Barack Obama's 'Real' Birth Certificate"

 

Origins:   On 28 May 2014, the World News Daily Report web site published an article positing that the Kenyan government had released "11 exclusive documents" suggesting that Barack Obama was born in that country.



The Office of the Principal Register of the Nyanza Province, in Kenya, has finally released 11 exclusive documents concerning Barack Obama’s alleged birth and early childhood in the country. These official papers had been requested for years by the Tea Party Patriots, an American conservative organization, to no avail, but the Kenyan Supreme Court recently ordered authorities to release the documents, based on a law on “access to information. These files, if they turn out to be verifiable, could mean that Mr. Obama had no legal right to become the American president under the country’s law.

The papers released today suggest that Barack Obama was actually born on March 7 1960, in Lamu, Kenya, more than a year before his father moved to Hawaii, where he allegedly met his mother. This contradicts most of the documents presented by the presidential office over the last years, suggesting that either the American or the Kenyan papers are actually fakes.


Soon afterwards links and excerpts referencing this item were being circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered it mistaking it for a genuine news article. However, that article was just another spoof from World News Daily Report, a tabloid-like web site whose stock in trade is publishing fantastically fictional stories such as "200 Million Year Old Dinosaur Egg Hatches in Berlin Museum and "Miner Found Alive After 17 Years Underground."

Last updated:   30 May 2014

By David Mikkelson

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.

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