'Mark The Beginning Of The End Of Her Campaign': Kamala Harris Accused Of Plagiarism In 2009 Book On Criminal Justice

Vice President Kamala Harris is facing plagiarism accusations after a new analysis of her 2009 book, Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer, which she co-authored with Joan O'C. Hamilton showed the duo pulling full paragraphs of text from various sources, including Wikipedia, without proper citation.

The accusations were published by conservative activist Christopher Rufo, perhaps best known for his plagiarism investigation into former Harvard President Claudine Gay, which led to her resignation earlier this year. The new accusations stem from an investigation by Austrian "plagiarism hunter" Stefan Weber, who is known in the German-speaking world for taking down politicians for their plagiarism.

To showcase the multiple examples of blatant copying, Rufo posted side-by-side comparisons of text from Harris' book and five different sources, all published before the then-San Francisco district attorney released her first book. According to Rufo's substack article on the accusations, Harris lifted passages from a Wikipedia article drafted in 2008, an Urban Institute report from 2004, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release from 2007, a Bureau of Justice Assistance report from 2000, and an Associated Press article from 2008. 

According to The New York Post, Harris' ghostwriter Joan O'C. Hamilton said that she wasn't aware of the accusations. "I haven't seen anything," she told The Post. "I'm afraid I can't talk to you right now, though, I'm in the middle of something. Let me go try to figure that out."

"Taken in total, there is certainly a breach of standards here. Harris and her co-author duplicated long passages nearly verbatim without proper citation and without quotation marks, which is the textbook definition of plagiarism," Rufo explained. "Of course, Harris, like many other public figures, may have relied entirely on a ghostwriter to draft her book. But that is not exculpatory: Harris, at the end of the day, put her name on the cover. On that point, one might recall the title of her book: Smart on Crime. There is nothing smart about plagiarism, which is the equivalent of an academic crime. The publisher, as well as the sitting vice president, should retract the plagiarized passages and issue a correction. There should be a single standard—and Kamala Harris is falling short."

The accusations against Harris could be devastating to her campaign given the multiple instances in which plagiarism has sunk presidential hopefuls, including President Joe Biden in 1987. "This is plagiarism with a capital P. This could mark the beginning of the end of her campaign," Fox News contributor Joe Concha wrote about the accusations. "That's not hyperbole. One of her biggest issues has always been authenticity… And this completely underscores her lack of it."

Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) also shared the accusations, writing on X, "Hi, I'm JD Vance. I wrote my own book, unlike Kamala Harris, who copied hers from Wikipedia." 

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