After years of denying the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency, it was only in the midst of his own presidential campaign that Donald Trump began falsely claiming Hillary Clinton was the true progenitor of the “birther” conspiracy theory claiming Obama was not born in the United States.

But that’s swapping one discredited claim for another. Numerous fact checks, reports and interviews — in 2008 and 2011, when Trump revived the controversy — revealed that although some Clinton supporters circulated rumors about Obama’s citizenship, the campaign and Clinton herself never trafficked in it.


“There has never been evidence that Clinton or her campaign started the birther rumors,” said Ben Smith, editor in chief of BuzzFeed, who as a POLITICO reporter in 2011 linked the origin of the “birther” movement to a fringe politician in Illinois. Some hardcore Clinton backers circulated the rumors in 2008, but the campaign itself steered clear.

“As we reported, some of her supporters flirted with the idea in 2008 — but it has its origins in the fever swamps beginning in Illinois in 2004,” he said.

In fact, birtherism, as it’s been called, reportedly began with innuendo by serial Illinois political candidate Andy Martin, who painted Obama as a closet Muslim in 2004. That spiraled into a concerted effort by conspiracy theorists to raise doubts about Obama’s birthplace and religion — and essentially paint him as un-American.

Martin, who briefly launched a little-noticed presidential campaign last year, has disavowed the movement he’s often credited with starting, though he still foments similarly discredited doubts about Obama’s religion.

Clinton’s 2008 hands are recoiling at Trump’s revisionism about their role in propagating the lie about Obama’s citizenship. “The suggestion that the Hillary campaign was pushing birtherism in 2008 is bunk. It's fiction,” said Phil Singer, who was Clinton’s 2008 press secretary.

Much of the insinuation that Clinton had a hand in birtherism traces to the role of her then-senior strategist Mark Penn, who issued a memo in 2007 suggesting that Clinton emphasize Obama’s upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia and paint him as fundamentally un-American. The memo never questioned Obama’s citizenship but did suggest highlighting his “lack of American roots.”

“[H]is roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited,” Penn wrote. “I cannot imagine electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.”

The Clinton campaign never employed Penn’s strategy, and to this day it provokes sharply different perceptions among those who remember discussing it. Two sources with knowledge of the deliberations say Penn’s memo caused a “near-staff revolt” at the time it came up and contributed to factional infighting that would later hobble the campaign.

Another source who recalled the discussion dismissed that perception as revisionist, arguing instead that the memo was barely considered at all. “This memo got about 30 seconds of discussion and the only recommendation was that she emphasize her Midwest upbringing,” the source said. “While the campaign may have disagreed on going negative on Barack Obama, this paragraph had nothing to do with those discussions and it did not in any cause any discussion of his citizenship.”

Later, in the spring 2008, as Clinton’s chances of winning the Democratic primary grew thin, some of her hardcore supporters circulated rumors that Obama may not be a U.S. citizen, picking up on some of Martin’s innuendo and extending it further.

“Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy. She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth,” read one of those emails posted, at the time, by Snopes.com, a site that attempts to debunk internet rumors.

Birtherism reportedly began with innuendo by serial Illinois political candidate Andy Martin, who painted Obama as a closet Muslim in 2004. | AP Photo

On Friday, Clinton’s former senior aide Patti Solis Doyle acknowledged that a volunteer coordinator in Iowa forwarded a birther-related email. “Hillary made the decision immediately let that person go,” she said. “We let that person go. It was so beyond the pale of the campaign Hillary wanted to run and that we as a staff wanted to run that I called David Plouffe who was managing Barack Obama to apologize to say this is not coming from us, that this was rogue volunteer.”

“The campaign nor Hillary did not start the birther movement, period,” she said.

The rumors that Obama was born in Kenya dogged him as he entered the general election fight against John McCain (who similarly steered clear of the issue). Some conservative blogs picked up the rumor as well. To counter the claim, the Obama campaign released a copy of his short-form “certification of live birth” to the liberal Daily Kos.

But it was that gesture that proved the durability of the birther conspiracy theories. Immediately, those who questioned Obama’s birth declared the short-form birth certificate insufficient proof or even a forgery. But the issue had clearly moved even further to the fringe and seemed to dissipate until Donald Trump revived it in 2011, demanding a “long-form” birth certificate.

Donald Trump speaks to the media at Pease International Trade Port in Portsmouth, N.H., on April 27, 2011, about the release of President Barack Obama’s release original birth certificate. | Getty

During a March 23, 2011 appearance on The View, Trump sparred with Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters about Obama’s birth.

“Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate?” Trump said. “I wish he would because I think it’s a terrible pall that’s hanging over him … There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.”

When panelists asked Trump why George W. Bush was never asked to produce his birth certificate, Trump added, “I’m not saying I’m a fan of George Bush. You know that better than anybody. But George Bush was born in this country.”

For the next few months, Trump courted believers in the conspiracy and even advised advocates for state laws requiring future presidents to produce proof of their U.S. birth. Ironically, an Arizona bill on the matter, which Trump specifically advocated for, was vetoed by then-Gov. Jan Brewer – now a top Trump surrogate. Brewer questioned its requirement to force presidential candidates to release “baptismal or circumcision certificates” in lieu of a birth certificate.

At that time, polling showed Republicans were far more inclined to believe that Obama wasn’t a U.S. citizen. At that time, as they do now, the Clintons forcefully disavowed the notion.

Glenn Thrush and Brent Griffiths contributed reporting.



A brief history of Donald Trump's birther past On Friday, Donald Trump officially stated that he no longer believes President Barack Obama was born outside the United States, breaking away from a conspiracy theory that helped fuel his political rise.