Washington DC:
US President Obama posted a copy of his "long-form" birth certificate from the state of Hawaii, hoping to finally end a long-simmering conspiracy theory among some conservatives who asserted falsely that he was not born in the United States and was not a legitimate president.
The birth certificate, which is posted online at the White House Web site, shows conclusively that Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is signed by state officials and his mother.
"The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn't good for the country," Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, wrote on the Web site Wednesday morning. "It may have been good politics and good TV, but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country."
Mr. Obama is expected to address questions about the birth certificate in a briefing with reporters Wednesday morning at 9:45.
The contention that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States, and therefore did not meet the constitutional requirement for election as president, has been around for years and has long been refuted, but has recently gained public attention after Donald Trump, the real estate mogul, repeatedly raised questions as he explores whether to run for president.
Mr. Pfeiffer said in the statement on the site that the president authorized officials in Hawaii to release the document broadly.
In a news conference Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump claimed credit for forcing Mr. Obama's hand, saying that "I feel I've accomplished something really, really important." But he said the document released Wednesday would have to be examined for authenticity.
"I hope it's the right deal," he said. "We have to look at it. A lot of people have to look at it. I hope it's true, and the reason I hope its true is because we have real problems in this country."
White House officials had for years sought to ignore questions about Mr. Obama's birth, pointing to a shorter form routinely given out by Hawaiian officials as sufficient to end the questions.
In July of 2009, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary at the time, dismissed the "made-up fictional nonsense of whether or not the president was born in this country."
But the so-called birth controversy continued as evidenced by polls that suggested large numbers of people in the country said they were not confident that Mr. Obama was in fact born in the country.
Many of the doubters suggested that Mr. Obama could not produce the "long-form" birth certificate because they assumed it did not exist. The White House decision to produce the document is an effort to disprove those accusations.