Legacy media are working overtime to delegitimize a new report indicating Kamala Harris allegedly plagiarized parts of a book she co-authored.
The cover-up began on Monday shortly after the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo reported findings by Austrian “plagiarism hunter” Stefan Weber, who purportedly discovered that a 2009 book co-authored by Harris and Joan O’C. Hamilton contains passages seemingly lifted from various other published works and websites. The book is titled Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer.
Rufo noted how “[s]ome of the passages [Weber] highlighted appear to contain minor transgressions — reproducing small sections of text; insufficient paraphrasing — but others seem to reflect more serious infractions, similar in severity to those found in Harvard president Claudine Gay’s doctoral thesis.” The report cited numerous examples in which Harris and her co-author seemingly lifted text from sources such as an NBC News article, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release, and a Wikipedia article.
In an effort to run damage control for Harris’ flailing campaign, the anti-speech New York Times dispatched three “journalists” to pen an article aimed at undercutting Rufo’s reporting. Replaying their worn-out “Republicans pounce!” playbook with the headline “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages From Harris Book,” authors Stephanie Saul, Vimal Patel, and Dylan Freedman attempted to convince Times readers that the massive scandal is just another “right-wing” nothingburger.
“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
