Kamala Harris Hit with Another Plagiarism Allegation a Day After Scandal Erupts: 'We Can Keep This Going'

A new plagiarism accusation has been raised against Vice President Kamala Harris, as The New York Times’ defense of Harris has intensified the controversy.

On Monday, conservative activist Christopher Rufo published five instances of alleged plagiarism from Harris’s 2009 book, Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer, co-authored with Joan O'C. Hamilton.

The New York Times responded with a report defending Harris, stating, “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.”

Rufo fired back with additional excerpts, tweeting, “We can keep this going for a while,” and adding, “She copied the language verbatim.”

Rufo’s claims are based on an analysis by Stefan Weber, who posted his findings online. Weber asserted, “Harris copy-pasted a Wikipedia article into her book Smart on Crime (2009). In total, this documentation highlights 27 fragments of plagiarism in her book. Plagiarism fragments can be proven from p. 10 to p. 185.”

Weber summarized his findings by noting, “Kamala Harris copied virtually an entire Wikipedia article into her book without providing any attribution to Wikipedia.” He also alleged, “Kamala Harris fabricated a source reference, inventing a nonexistent page number.” He further accused Harris of copying self-promotional content from Goodwill Industries without citing them, despite their partnership on her “Back on Track” program.

“In many other instances, even when a source was cited with a footnote, the text was directly copied and pasted without using quotation marks. Quotation marks would have been the most transparent and honest approach, even in non-academic books,” Weber wrote.

Weber also highlighted potential signs of dishonesty, noting changes to copied content, such as “replacing a Subway store owner with a sandwich shop clerk (p. 124)” and discussing Southeast Asia in the context of the U.S. gang problem (p. 184).

In a blog post, Weber asked, “What do these findings say about Kamala Harris? Is she in part fake? Did her ghostwriter plagiarize? Was it just the team behind her? I have no idea. I let other people from the U.S. draw the right conclusions.”

In its defense of Harris, the Times quoted Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism consultant and publisher of Plagiarism Today, who downplayed the accusations. “This amount of plagiarism amounts to an error and not an intent to defraud,” Bailey said, arguing that Rufo was exaggerating minor citation mistakes in a large body of text.

However, Bailey later distanced himself from that position, clarifying on Twitter, “For those coming here from the NY Times Article. I want to be clear that I have NOT performed a full analysis of the book. My quotes were based on information provided to me by the reporters and spoke only about those passages.”

Rufo claimed that the Times was provided with Weber’s complete 49-page analysis, but said they “deliberately withheld” details. He asked “politely for a correction,” but said the editor, Mary Suh, had “nothing but excuses.” Rufo declared, “We’re going to fight this one out,” and vowed to correct the record publicly if the Times did not issue a correction.

In their coverage, CNN acknowledged reviewing several passages highlighted by Rufo and found that Harris and O’C. Hamilton had “failed to properly attribute language to sources.”

CNN’s definition of plagiarism appeared to diverge from that of the Times. They explained, “Plagiarized works include using someone else’s work without giving them proper and appropriate credit for their ideas and words. Even if the source of the information is cited, it is still considered plagiarism if the ideas are not paraphrased or quoted in the correct place, experts told CNN late last year.”