Arizona's 'toughest sheriff' to release findings of Obama birth certificate probe

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio will reveal the findings of his office's investigation into the authenticity of President Obama's birth certificate on March 1, he announced Tuesday.

"Once again I take my elected sheriff's status very serious and when the people ask me to do something, I try to do it regardless of the repercussions, the politics," Arpaio said Tuesday at the Maricopa County Republican Party Lincoln Day Lunch and Straw Poll. "So on March 1st I will have a press conference and reveal what we found out during that investigation. And I don't have press conferences just to have my name on television."

In 2011, Arpaio assigned a five-man team to investigate the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate. Some on the right challenged that Obama's birth certificate was fake and that, in fact, Obama was not an American citizen.

While weighing whether to jump into the presidential race, real estate mogul Donald Trump was one of the most outspoken critics of Obama for not quelling rumors that he might not be an American citizen. Obama eventually released his long-form birth certificate in April, disproving the claims.