As a graphics monkey for about 20 years, starting with Aldus Digital Darkroom & Adobe Photoshop version 0.97 on a Macintosh SE-30, I know crumby work when I see it.
First of all, the .pdf posted on the White House dot gov site was not just an image, like you would have if you had actually wanted to make a duplicate copy of a paper document. It was still in "layers" with all of the text separated out as if they had just been pasted there (they were). The background green blobs (safety paper design) is often missing or mis-aligned when the text is inserted in the block. Even the text itself shows poor copying or poor judgement on the part of the forger with alignment, shape, size, and tone problems. Then, there is the tell-tale pattern of multiple .jpg compressions fogging around the number 1 at the end of the document serial number. Judge for yourself with these unmanipulated clippings below in larger/smaller versions.
Lesson: Hire a graphics professional to do good work. Political Science interns don't have the needed experience to play the fake documents game. Cheers.
