Conservative columnist Monica Crowley, in her first appearance since a plagiarism scandal forced her to forgo a White House position as deputy national security advisor, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Tuesday night that the allegations were a hit job that was part of a greater effort to destabilize and destroy the president.
“What happened to me was a despicable straight-up political hit job,” said Crowley. “It’s been debunked, my editor has completely supported me and backed me up.”
In January, Crowley’s publisher HarperCollins pulled all copies of her book, What The (Bleep) Just Happened?, from shelves following allegations of plagiarism raised by CNN.
“The book, which has reached the end of its natural sales cycle, will no longer be offered for purchase until such time as the author has the opportunity to source and revise the material,” the publisher, which is owned by News Corp., told CNN in a statement.
Former assistant U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy recently defended Crowley at National Review, saying that the uproar over the plagiarism allegations took “an emotional toll” on his friend.
McCarthy said Crowley’s oversights had been “blown wildly out of proportion, to the point of smear,” citing copyright attorney Lynn Chu’s careful study of the plagiarism allegations.
Ms. Chu concluded:
I found CNN’s splashy “plagiarism” accusation to be ill-supported — a heavily exaggerated, political hit job. Instead, after reading texts side by side with footnotes, I came away impressed by the very high quality and care taken by Ms. Crowley in her writing, scholarship and research overall. Many parallels in fact read on the page as rather different even if certain content or phrases were the same, and they were largely short, fragmentary, and routine. Historical research inevitably draws heavily on the work of other scholars. Dissertations exist to synthesize. The relatively few examples of unsourced copying found was in my opinion de minimus, should just be corrected, and not allowed to besmirch Ms. Crowley’s reputation.
“There is a very toxic—and it’s getting increasingly toxic and poisonous—atmosphere of personal destruction in Washington and the media…It’s always sort of been there, but now it’s at a whole different level,” Crowley told Hannity.
“In some ways, I was something of the canary in the coal mine — the attack on me was a test,” she continued. “What happened to me, what happened to General Flynn, what’s happened to Attorney General Sessions and others is all of a piece. There is a very dangerous and very effective destabilization campaign underway against this president, his administration, and his agenda.”
Crowley warned that forces are not only trying to delegitimize Trump, they want to personally destroy him.
“They are out for blood,” she declared. “And the reason they have to destroy him is that Donald Trump is an alien organism that has been injected into the body politic by the American people to reform it. He must not be allowed to succeed. They have swarmed him, they have swarmed everyone around him, in order to reject him out of the system. Just like any alien organism.”
Crowley said that she hopes everyone around the president “understands that this is a war” and that it “will not end until they get the president of the United States.”
Hannity listed five different factions he sees going after the president. The first he called “the snowflake faction” (the protesters out in the streets), followed by an obstructionist Democrat Party, the media establishment, “weak and timid” establishment Republicans, and the Deep State. They are all “out for blood,” he said.
“David Brock and some of these organizations have already raised tens of millions of dollars for an impeachment process. Then they want, ‘Jail to the Chief,'” Crowley noted.
“We are so far beyond normal politics, Sean,” she continued. “We are at a very dangerous moment. While President Trump is a very strong leader and a man of strong constitution — he was able to survive all of this during the campaign and get elected president.”
She added, “When you are president, and you are faced with the kind of monolithic opposition plus a federal bureaucracy that is out to undermine him every day — the intelligence communities that are engaged in some of this as well — I hope to God that he’s strong enough to withstand this.”
Hannity expressed confidence in the president: “I think he’s strong enough.”
But Crowley warned, “They are out to thwart him because if he succeeds, the country changes for the good and they must not allow that to happen.”
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