The New York Times on Monday attempted to downplay evidence that Vice President Kamala Harris plagiarized sections of her 2009 boo...
The New York Times on Monday attempted to downplay evidence that Vice President Kamala Harris plagiarized sections of her 2009 book “Smart on Crime.”
The Times repeatedly suggested that only “five sections” or “passages” from the book were plagiarized, citing a plagiarism “expert” who said the passages amounted “to an error and not an intent to defraud.”
Chris Rufo, the conservative activist who brought attention to the plagiarism which was first discovered by Austrian “Plagiarism Hunter” Stefan Weber, took to X on Monday afternoon to debunk the Times article. Rufo provided emails sent to Times reporter Stephanie Saul, one of three authors of the article, the headline of which reads: “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages From Harris Book.”
“The Times claims that I only argued that Kamala Harris plagiarized ‘five sections’ involving ‘about 500 words,’” Rufo wrote. “But this isn’t true. In my story, I wrote that Stefan Weber argued there are ‘more than a dozen’ instances of ‘vicious plagiarism.’ This past Saturday, I provided the Times not only with my written analysis, which argues that there are ‘more than a dozen,’ but with Weber’s full dossier, which included 18 allegations of varying severity.”
“So, the Times deliberately withheld this crucial contextual information from its readers and from the supposed plagiarism expert, who, based on this limited information, called it ‘not serious,’” Rufo continued. “They could have easily confirmed the “more than a dozen” point, but instead, lied by omission.”
Rufo also criticized the Times for claiming “none of the passages in question took the ideas or thoughts of another writer.” Rufo argued that reasoning was “preposterous.”
“Harris not only copied multiple paragraphs of other people’s work verbatim, but she often lifted those ideas directly and at face value,” Rufo said. “In one case, she came to the wrong conclusion because she copied Wikipedia—i.e., she stole a bad idea, copied the language verbatim, and got the point wrong.”
The Times consulted Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism consultant, who told the outlet that Rufo had taken a relatively small amount of the book and was trying to “make a big deal of it.”
But on X, Bailey addressed concerns by saying he had “NOT performed a full analysis of the book,” adding that his comments “were based on information provided to me by the reporters and spoke only about those passages.”
Rufo commented on Bailey’s post, noting that the Times only provided Bailey with five passages, “in other words, it deliberately withheld more than a dozen of the accusations in an attempt to manipulate the expert and run interference for Kamala Harris. This is pure corruption.”
The authors of the Times article did not respond to a Daily Wire inquiry prior to press time.
The Times’ handling of Harris’ plagiarism is markedly different than how it handled allegations of plagiarism against Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. When Paul was found to have plagiarized passages, the Times published at least three stories on the matter and one opinion piece. In each example, the word “plagiarism” was used in some form in the headline.
As The Daily Wire reported on Monday, the publisher of Harris’ book, Chronicle Books, appears to be in “damage-control mode” after accidentally sending Rufo an email from a higher-up.
Rufo posted a screenshot of the email to X, which showed Chronicle’s VP Lauren Hoffman telling staff that all inquiries about the book need to go through her.
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