Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio claimed this afternoon that President Obama's birth certificate is a fraud.
The sheriff said a forensic examination of the electronic copy of the document posted last year by the White House proves that it was not simply scanned into a file but actually put together from several pieces. And Mike Zullo, who headed the investigation, said the inconsistencies cannot be explained away by claims that it was optimized or had been scanned with optical character recognition software. Zullo also said the president's selective service registration also was forged. Arpaio stressed he was not saying the president committed a crime.
"I'm not accusing anyone of anything until we find out who may have committed these alleged crimes over this birth certificate and the selective service cards," he said.
But Zullo said a crime has been committed -- and one that the Maricopa County sheriff can investigate.
"The fact that that document was put up on the web site of the White House for distribution to anyone in the country, the world, who wanted to see it, was a representation made to the people of Maricopa County, including a press conference where the president himself attests, that 'this is my document, proof positive. You fraud one person in Maricopa County with that, you fraud every person in Maricopa County," said Zullo.
The White House declined to respond.