Following in the footsteps of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden again, Kamala Harris finds herself embroiled in a plagiarism scandal.
Christopher Rufo has exposed damning evidence that Harris lifted passages from Wikipedia for her book, "Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer." It was originally released in 2009 but re-released in 2022.
This is a pretty big deal, and the mainstream media is desperate to downplay the accusations. As PJ Media's Robert Spencer reported Monday, the New York Times tried to flip the script and blast Kamala's critics for having the audacity to make this crime an issue. Instead, the paper embarrassed itself, trying to downplay the plagiarism by citing a friendly expert who claimed that it was merely an innocent mistake.
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“This amount of plagiarism amounts to an error and not an intent to defraud,” plagiarism export Jonathan Bailey told the paper. He then accused Rufo of taking a minor citation problem and trying to “make a big deal of it.”
Rufo disputes this attempt to downplay the accusations.
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
The liberal media was unable to bury the story, and the Harris-Walz campaign was forced to respond.
“Rightwing operatives are getting desperate as they see the bipartisan coalition of support Vice President Harris is building to win this election, as Trump retreats to a conservative echo chamber refusing to face questions about his lies," Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said in a statement. "This is a book that’s been out for 15 years, and the Vice President clearly cited sources and statistics in footnotes and endnotes throughout."
However, even CNN confirmed Rufo's reporting.
BREAKING: CNN confirms my reporting that Kamala Harris plagiarized her book, Smart on Crime.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 15, 2024
This is exactly how it worked with Claudine Gay: the NYT tried to obfuscate; CNN told the truth; other publications followed. Eventually, even the NYT admitted that it was plagiarism. pic.twitter.com/msa1PpwZaY
Make no mistake about it; this is a full-blown scandal now. And Kamala's publisher, Chronicle Books, is now in crisis mode. How do we know? They accidentally sent Rufo an internal communication indicating that all inquiries about Kamala's plagiarized book must go through the higher-ups in the company.
BREAKING: Kamala Harris's publisher, Chronicle Books, is in damage control mode. The company accidentally sent my team an internal communication indicating that VP Lauren Hoffman is requiring that all inquiries about Harris's plagiarism go through the higher ups. pic.twitter.com/seiF3bu0R2
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 14, 2024
Remember, a plagiarism scandal thwarted Joe Biden's first presidential campaign in 1987. Barack Obama managed to survive his plagiarism scandal in 2008, but Kamala's plagiarism scandal has already managed to gain more traction than Obama's. One thing is for sure: in the final weeks of the campaign, this is the last thing Kamala needed.
And you can bet that Bret Baier will ask her about it when he interviews her this week.
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