After a conservative journalist exposed Vice President Kamala Harris for plagiarizing multiple passages in her 2009 book, the New York Times has acknowledged the plagiarism but claimed that it was “not serious.”
Harris was already caught plagiarizing sections of her campaign website from President Joe Biden’s campaign website, and now she’s being called out for plagiarism once again.
The New York Times has historically reported on these types of scandals, declaring the act of omitting or deleting attribution for passages quoted from other sources to be “plagiarism” — but when it is done by Harris or other Democrats, they deem it to be “errors” rather than outright plagiarism.
Harris’ plagiarism in her 2009 book, titled “Smart on Crime,” was exposed by conservative journalist Christopher Rufo — who based his exposé on research by Dr. Stefan Weber, a world-renowned Austrian expert on plagiarism.
EXCLUSIVE: Kamala Harris plagiarized at least a dozen sections of her criminal-justice book, Smart on Crime, according to a new investigation. The current vice president even lifted material from Wikipedia.
We have the receipts. 🧵
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 14, 2024
The book, co-authored with Joan O’C Hamilton, was “First published as Harris (then the San Francisco district attorney) was beginning her 2010 campaign for California Attorney General” and “outlines her vision of how the criminal justice system should function,” according to Wikipedia — the same source that she plagiarized from.
Weber’s summary of his findings states: “Kamala Harris copied virtually an entire Wikipedia article into her book without providing attribution to Wikipedia.”
The most damning part of the exposé explains that “Harris fabricated a source reference, inventing a nonexistent page number.”
The investigation was conducted by Dr. Stefan Weber, a famed Austrian "plagiarism hunter" who has taken down politicians in the German-speaking world. We independently confirmed multiple violations, which are comparable in severity to the plagiarism found in former Harvard… pic.twitter.com/P9DTpZS4kV
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 14, 2024
Rufo highlighted numerous examples of Harris’ plagiarism in the post thread, including that she “lifted verbatim language from an uncited AP/NBC News report” in her passage about high school graduation rates.
We can begin with a passage in which Harris discusses high school graduation rates. Here, she lifted verbatim language from an uncited AP/NBC News report: pic.twitter.com/pZv5mD3m5t
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 14, 2024
Of course, rather than calling out Harris for her blatant plagiarism, the New York Times instead focused on attacking Rufo for calling her out.
The article, hilariously titled “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages From Harris Book,” has a sub-headline that is desperately trying to defend Harris, reading: “A report by Christopher Rufo says the Democratic presidential nominee copied five short passages for her 2009 book on crime. A plagiarism expert said the lapses were not serious.”
In trying to defend their chosen candidate, the New York Times wrote: “The passages called into question by Mr. Rufo on his Substack platform involve about 500 words in the approximately 65,000-word, 200-page book. Ms. Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, wrote the book with another author when she was the district attorney in San Francisco.”
“In a review of the book, The New York Times found that none of the passages in question took the ideas or thoughts of another writer, which is considered the most serious form of plagiarism. Instead, the sentences copy descriptions of programs or statistical information that appear elsewhere,” the outlet claimed, later adding: “Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism consultant in New Orleans and the publisher of Plagiarism Today, said on Monday that his initial reaction to Mr. Rufo’s claims was that the errors were not serious, given the size of the document.”
They then shifted to attacking Rufo by claiming that he is a racist.
“Mr. Rufo is part of a loose confederation of conservative writers and activists who, during the past year, have tried to expose plagiarism among academics, many of whom have been Black scholars who work in the field of diversity and inclusion. … Some academics … have characterized the campaign as racist,” the leftist propaganda outlet wrote.
The New York Times was slammed on social media for their shocking bias, with The Federalist editor in chief Molly Hemingway deeming the article “laughable Democrat propaganda.”
The authors of this laughable Democrat propaganda at the New York Times — published to protect Kamala Harris, facts be darned — are @stefsaul, @vimalnyt, and @dylfreed. Yes, it took three people to do this. https://t.co/BBesQFUm08
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 14, 2024
Meanwhile, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), who is also an author, predicted that the mainstream media would defend Harris in a hilarious post.
“Hi, I’m JD Vance. I wrote my own book, unlike Kamala Harris, who copied hers from Wikipedia,” he wrote.
“Cue the corporate media ‘fact checkers’: ‘Vance’s tweet is missing important context. Kamala Harris only copied some of her book from Wikipedia,’” he continued in a follow-up post.
Cue the corporate media "fact checkers":
"Vance's tweet is missing important context. Kamala Harris only copied some of her book from Wikipedia."
— JD Vance (@JDVance) October 14, 2024
