WATCH: Sen. JD Vance SLAMS Kamala Harris Following Plagiarism Accusation - 'Copies Her Own Ideas From Wikipedia'

After Vice President Kamala Harris was accused of plagiarism by conservative activist Christopher Rufo on Monday, Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) slammed Harris for her inauthenticity. During a campaign event, Vance told the media that voters should vote for a candidate with original ideas, like Donald Trump.

"I saw today a story that Kamala Harris apparently copied significant chunks of her book from Wikipedia," Vance said about the alleged plagiarism in her 2009 book, Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer. "So if you want a president with their own ideas, vote Donald Trump. If you want a president that copies her own ideas from Wikipedia, vote for Kamala Harris."

As previously reported by the DC Enquirer, the 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. The New York Post reported that 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. 

"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. After Rufo published the accusations, Vance took to X to write, "Hi, I'm JD Vance. I wrote my own book, unlike Kamala Harris, who copied hers from Wikipedia." Despite the bullet-proof evidence of Harris' plagiarism, The New York Times attempted to downplay the accusations by citing "plagiarism experts" and academics who called Rufo's campaign against plagiarism racist.

.@JDVance: "I saw today a story that Kamala Harris apparently copied significant portions of her book from Wikipedia. So if you want a President with their own ideas, vote Donald Trump. If you want a President that copies her own ideas from Wikipedia, vote for Kamala Harris." pic.twitter.com/M6pDLjBj2s

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 14, 2024