Arpaio not surprised by erroneous Hawaiian missile alert, points to state's handling of 'phony' Obama birth certificate

— -- Arizona Senate candidate Joe Arpaio, the controversial former sheriff of Maricopa County and an outspoken "birther," said Saturday he is not surprised that Hawaiians received an erroneous emergency mobile alert about an imminent ballistic missile attack because "there's something wrong with that government."

Case in point, according to Arpaio? Former President Barack Obama's "fraudulent" Hawaii birth certificate.

Arpaio claims Obama was not born in the U.S., despite what the birth certificate says. But Obama was indeed born in the U.S., in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961.

During an interview Saturday night with Fox News' Jeanine Pirro, Arpaio was asked for his thoughts on the alert, which turned out to be false and the result of human error.

"I don’t want to get into it," Arpaio said, "but I know doing a certain investigation on a fake, fraudulent government document. They can’t even solve that case. They don’t even want to look at it. So either they’re incompetent or there’s something behind it."

Pirro didn't let those remarks go unchallenged, telling Arpaio, 85, "I got to push back on that a little bit. That document, the long-form, was filed. Let’s put that way. Let’s talk about what happened today in Hawaii. You had some specific thoughts about today."

Arpaio said, "Well, the only thing I’m saying is they can’t even solve a phony document. So now they’ve got a problem. There’s something wrong with that government."

Arpaio is running for the Senate seat currently occupied by Sen. Jeff Flake, who is retiring from Congress at the end of his term.

Once again he was met with resistance by Pirro, who countered, "Well, let’s keep moving, because they did solve that, and I’m going to keep pushing back on that."

President Donald Trump last year pardoned Arpaio for criminal contempt of court, a misdemeanor. Arpaio had been convicted of the crime for disobeying a federal judge's order to stop racial profiling in detaining "individuals suspected of being in the U.S. illegally"