Factcheck's non-profit status challenged over Obama birth certificate

Researcher Ron Polland has launched Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service challenges against Factcheck.org, charging the media monitor has violated its tax-exempt legal status as a non-partisan organization by publishing and promoting a short-form birth certificate for Obama he contends was forged.

Polland began his investigation of Factcheck when it published a full-page scan copy of Obama's short-form Certification of Live Birth on June 16, 2008, four days after the Daily Kos posted the first copy on June 12, 2008 – a trimmed version of Factcheck's full-page scan.

Factcheck is the only entity besides the St Petersburg Times to publish a full-page copy of the short-form birth certificate. The Obama campaign posted a reduced copy of the trimmed version.

Freshly updated! Find out what Obama's story truly is, in "Where's the REAL Birth Certificate?" by Jerome Corsi.

Then, on Aug. 21, 2008, Factcheck published photographs of a paper birth certificate, complete with visible folds and state seal, offered as proof the birth certificate shown in June was not simply a scanned document.

"When Factcheck published its 'Born in the USA' story on Aug. 21, 2008, with photos of Obama's birth certificate, many thought the controversy was over." Polland told WND. "No other story has been cited more often and by more people in defense of claims that Obama had already released his state-certificate and proved beyond any question that he was born in Hawaii."

Polland has long argued that the Obama short-form birth certificate originated from computer-created documents first shown as scans by the DailyKos and Factcheck.

His argument now is that the paper short-form birth certificate displayed by Factcheck was nothing more than a paper version of Factcheck's computer-created scan, not an authentic short-form birth certificate issued by the Hawaii Department of Health and delivered to Factcheck by the Obama campaign.

Polland told WND Factcheck was so sure its photos had won the "battle of the birth certificate that the editors sat back and waited for the dust to settle."

"Well, the dust did settle," he continued. "But not where Factcheck expected it would be."

Polland's complaint to the IRS reads in part:

In June 2008, the Annenberg Public Policy Center, D/B/A Annenberg Factcheck colluded with the Obama Campaign to create a false identity document for Barack Obama and to conduct a propaganda campaign to prevent Obama's true identity and citizenship from being known. The document was allegedly a scan image of a Hawaiian Certification of Live Birth. In August 2008, after people questioned its authenticity, Factcheck created a physical document using a printout of the same scan image and took photos of it. Factcheck used the photos along with a fraudulent examination of them to authenticate the same false identity document they created.

Polland asked the IRS to rescind Factcheck's non-profit status, charging the principals at Factcheck are "leftwing political activists who campaigned for Obama and against McCain."

"When I saw the photos that Factcheck published in August 2008, I knew that they had photographed a printout of the forged COLB scan they published in June 2008," Poland told WND. "In August 2009, I figured out how the COLB scan was forged in Photoshop, and I began my work on replicating the COLB forgery used in the digital scan image and the digital photographs."

Why is this important?

"Factcheck's fraudulent story, 'Born in the USA,' is important in the election of Barack Obama," Polland explained. "The Congressional Research Service specifically distributed this report as a legitimate investigation to convince members of Congress that Obama was a legal U.S. citizen and eligible to be president."

WND previously reported that the short-form birth certificate placed on the White House website on April 27 – the day the White House released the long-form birth certificate – was not an original Certification of Live Birth issued by the Hawaii Department of Health. Instead, Polland claimed, it was a forgery he had created to show how Obama supporters made their own forgery the 2008 presidential campaign.

WND also reported that Polland successfully forged a long-form birth certificate. He argued that the anomalies seen in the long-form birth certificate released by the White House April 27 show it was a forgery, not an authentic original.

Follow the dots

Polland has presented WND a step-by-step analysis of the dust particles visible under high magnification on the scan and the paper copy of the short-form birth certificate that he claims proves convincingly both documents are forgeries.

Exhibit 1 below shows the photograph Factcheck displayed in August 2008; Exhibit 2 below shows the scan Factcheck displayed in June 2008.

Exhibit 1: Photo of short-term birth certificate, Factcheck, August 2008

Exhibit 2: Scan of short-term birth certificate, Factcheck, June 2008

In his e-book "Alias Barack Obama: A Lie is Born," Polland argued the short-form birth certificate was forged, with the security paper added as a separate layer to a composite image created in Adobe software.

Polland contends the scan of the short-form birth certificate posted by Factcheck has specks of dust that were on the scanner glass when the security paper was copied.

"A scanner works like an office copier," Polland explained. "A user places a sheet of paper on the glass. A bar containing a light and an image sensor moves underneath the glass along the length of the paper. The bar shines the light on the paper and the sensor records the light reflected from it."

If there are dust specks on the scanner glass that are dark enough to block out the light, then the dust specks might produce shadows on the paper that will look like black spots on the scan image.

Exhibit 3 shows the result of Polland's analysis in which he drew blue circles around the dark dots (dust spots) he found in the scan image:

Exhibit 3: 200 dust spots on Factcheck June 2008 short-form birth certificate scan

"I started at the top of the June 2008 scan and went line by line," he said. "I drew a circle around every dark spot I saw. I found about 200 of them, randomly scattered across the image. These had to be specks of dust on the scanner glass where the security paper was copied."

Next, Polland checked the Factcheck August 2008 photograph of the short-form birth certificate.

If the August 2008 photograph was derived from the June 2008 scan, then Polland expected to find identical dust specks on the documents.

Dots match exactly

The following side-by-side comparisons prove the August 2008 COLB photograph was taken from the June 2008 scanned COLB, according to Polland.

If Factcheck had an original short-form birth certificate issued by the Hawaii Department of Health, there would have been no reason to photograph a scan of the document.

The following side-by-side comparisons demonstrate, Polland contends, that the August 2008 photographs were taken from the June 2008 scanned birth certificate; the dark spots on the Factcheck photo are scanned dust specks that appear in the same place on the original scan image.

Dot 1: August 2008 photo

Dot 1: June 2008 scan

Dot 2: August 2008 photo

Dot 2: June 2008 scan

Dot 3: August 2008 photo

Dot 3: June 2008 scan

Dot 4: August 2008 photo

Dot 4: June 2008 scan

Dot 5: August 2008 photo

Dot 5: June 2008 scan

Dot 6: August 2008 photo

Dot 6: June 2008 scan

Dot 7: August 2008 photo

Dot 7: June 2008 scan

Dot 8: August 2008 photo

Dot 8: June 2008 scan

Critics might argue that the dust spots were on the paper document when it was scanned and later photographed.

"The only problem," Polland counters, "is that these spots are not actually dust particles – they are scanned images of dust particles. Dust particles would not remain fixed on a paper copy, or so sufficiently visible that they would show up in a photograph, especially not in the exact same places we see the dust specks in the scan."

The point is that if the photograph is of the scanned birth certificate and not a photograph of an authentic paper-copy document issued by the Hawaii Department of Health, then the photograph is a forgery as well.

An authentic paper-copy birth certificate issued by the Hawaii Department of Health would not be expected to display any dots or dust specs as seen on either the scanned or the photo version of the COLB displayed by Factcheck.

What about the seal?

A further difficulty for Factcheck is that the state seal, clearly visible on the photo released in August 2008, is not seen on the scanned short-term birth certificate released in June 2008.

"Who put the seal on the photo?" Polland asks. "Someone embossed Factcheck's COLB using a real seal or a knock-off. Who placed embossed that seal may be more important that what instrument was used to place the seal on the paper copy that was photographed in August 2008 – especially if an employee of the Hawaii Department of Health placed the seal there."