Donald Trump said Friday he now believes President Barack Obama was born in the United States, but other leading members of the so-called “birther” movement took the news in stride and remain hopeful of vindication, perhaps with an indictment delivered by Trump administration prosecutors.

“I don’t want to comment on this statement. I think we need to concentrate on making America great again,” says Orly Taitz, the Soviet-born dentist-turned-lawyer well known for her role in unsuccessful lawsuits challenging Obama's eligibility to be president.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, "has all the evidence, and right now is focusing on the campaign," Taitz says.

Joe Arpaio, the elected sheriff of 4.1 million-population Maricopa County, Arizona, tells U.S. News his department’s investigation into whether Obama’s publicly released birth certificate is a forgery remains active.

The sheriff announced in 2012 that a volunteer “cold case posse” had determined the document a probable computer-generated forgery and in January said: “It’s not over with yet. I need a couple lucky breaks and we’ll go public again.”

Arpaio, in a tough re-election campaign and fighting a judge's finding that he disobeyed an order in a racial profiling case, says billionaire George Soros may be supporting his opponent in part because of the birth certificate issue.

The sheriff referred specific questions to Michael Zullo, the volunteer commander of Arpaio’s cold case posse and lead investigator for the birth certificate case.

Zullo says “as recently as yesterday there’s been some progress made. It’s still an active investigation.”

“Donald Trump has never been briefed on our investigation, so he has no idea where we are on this or why we are standing so staunchly in our conclusion, nor did he ever fund this investigation,” Zullo added.

Zullo, a former police detective in New Jersey, said a forensics lab overseas currently reviewing the PDF of Obama’s released birth certificate, and said the probe exclusively is focused on possible forgery, rather than determining Obama’s birthplace.

“We were never here to pursue where this individual was born. We’re saying the document presented as a PDF file is not authentic and points to manipulation and under federal law, that would be a forgery of a vital statistics document,” he said.

Zullo said he’s paying for the work of the overseas forensics team, and that Hawaii state officials are not in the crosshairs of the probe.

“I don’t believe we have any evidence that Hawaii officials fabricated this document, I believe there are cover-up issues there,” he said, adding: “It didn’t happen by itself. If you’re asking me if there are people of interest, yes there are. Do we have suspects? I would not call anyone a suspect.”

Ultimately, Zullo said, a decision on any criminal charges relating to alleged forgery “is really a federal matter. It’s not something the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office can pursue on behalf of the nation. It has to be federal authorities.”

Zullo said he hopes a Trump Justice Department would at least take action to set up a framework for reviewing the personal histories of future presidential candidates.

Trump was a leading force behind the “birther” movement. In 2011, he toured the country demanding proof of Obama’s birthplace and, amid polls suggesting widespread uncertainty, the White House released Obama’s long-form birth certificate online, showing he was born in Hawaii.

On Friday, Trump said that current Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 campaign against Obama started the controversy over Obama’s birth, in what may have been a reference to the 2008 eligibility lawsuit filed by Philip Berg, a Clinton-supporting former Democratic Chairman for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, who said he was acting independently.

Despite Trump's statement, Taitz urged readers of her blog to "keep the eye on the prize" and optimistically says “the next attorney general who is not Obama’s lackey should investigate this issue and file criminal charges and the whole nation should see the evidence and it should be properly prosecuted." She said she has no inside scoop on what Trump would do.