It hasn’t been a good couple of days for Kamala Harris. On Wednesday night, she appeared on a widely panned Fox News interview with Bret Baier where she seemed defensive, evasive and combative. Meanwhile, Christopher Rufo, who describes himself as a “Writer, filmmaker, activist,” busted her for plagiarizing portions of her 2009 book “Smart on Crime,” which she co-authored.
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The lamestream media mostly ignored the story—because Orange Man Bad and Extremist Progressive Good—but the New York Times dutifully trotted out an expert who said, meh, no big deal. First, they said, “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages From Harris Book,” then they quote the expert as claiming, “The lapses were not that serious,” then they basically called Rufo a racist for pointing out Harris’ cheating ways.
Our Fourth Estate at work, friends.
RedState’s Sister Toldjah and Brad Slager have been on the story:
Kamala’s Plagiarism Scandal Displays the Severe Ethical Breakdown in So Many of Our Institutions
Sad Trombone: The New York Times Is Not Handling the Kamala Harris Plagiarism News Well at All
New: Chris Rufo Drops ‘Receipts’ on Kamala’s Alleged ‘Plagiarism Problem,’ and JD Vance Has Thoughts
And so, thought the corrupt media and the inept candidate, “Whew!” Another potential scandal swept away. Another story, that if it were about a Republican would be front page news in 90 percent of the papers in this country, is made to disappear.
Except that Rufo alleged that the Times withheld information from the so-called expert:
This caused the analyst, a man named Jonathan Bailey, to revisit his analysis and he realized: Oops, this is worse than I thought. Writing Tuesday in PlagiarismToday (did you know there was such an outlet? I didn’t), Bailey explained [emphasis mine]:
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With this new information, while I believe the case is more serious than I commented to the New York Times, the overarching points remain. While there are problems with this work, the pattern points to sloppy writing habits, not a malicious intent to defraud.
Is it problematic? Yes. But it’s also not the wholesale fraud that many have claimed it to be. It sits somewhere between what the two sides want it to be.
He still sticks to his weasel words and his get-out-of-jail-free language—he knows where his leftist bread is buttered—but his conclusions are nonetheless pretty damning.
He goes on to dismiss a number of Rufo’s claims—but even he can’t refute them all.
From there, the allegations do get more serious.
The most serious allegation concerns Wikipedia. Harris’ book contained roughly two paragraphs copied from Wikipedia without citation. To be clear, that is plagiarism. It’s compounded by the fact that Wikipedia is typically not seen as a reliable source, and, according to Weber, there was an error in the information.
The section quotes and cites a passage from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance but does not indicate that Wikipedia was used.
“To be clear, that is plagiarism.” There, he said it, out loud. Once again, he then goes on to dissemble and minimize and make favorable assumptions about Kamala’s intent, but the pit still remains at the center of the avocado: Kamala Harris stole other people’s work and did not credit them for it. Many careers have been ruined for less (see none other than Joe Biden, 1987), but in today’s environment of a dishonest press, it’s likely that many voters on the left have not even heard of these allegations.
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“Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism consultant in New Orleans and the publisher of Plagiarism Today, said on Monday that his initial reaction to Mr. Rufo’s claims was that the errors were not serious, given the size of the document.”
When even a New York Times “expert” flatly states that “that is plagiarism,” the issue should be front and center in front of the country—just as it would inevitably be if Donald Trump or any other conservative were caught cheating in this manner. That’s unfortunately not the world we live in, but we at RedState won’t stop reminding them that Kamala Harris is now… a confirmed plagiarist.
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