Vice President Kamala Harris is being accused of plagiarizing her 2009 book “Smart on Crime” after an investigation showed some parts of the book copied other publications verbatim.
Writer and conservative activist Christopher F. Rufo posted a thread Monday on X showing the results of the investigation by Stefan Weber, a famed Austrian “plagiarism hunter.”
Ms. Harris’ book, which she authored with Joan O’C. Hamilton, was published in 2009. It focused on ideas for overhauling the criminal justice system.
Mr. Rufo’s posts show five examples of duplicate wording found in the book and other sources, including an Associated Press article, a Wikipedia page, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release, and reports from the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Urban Institute.
In a summary of findings, Mr. Weber wrote that “Kamala Harris copied virtually an entire Wikipedia article into her book without providing any attribution to Wikipedia. Kamala Harris fabricated a source reference, inventing a nonexistent page number.”
The Wikipedia excerpt reads:
• The Midtown Community Court was established as a collaboration between the New York State Unified Court System and the Center for Court Innovation. The court works in partnership with local residents, businesses and social service agencies in order to organize community service projects and provide on-site social services, including drug treatment, mental health counseling, and job training.
In Ms. Harris’ book, only two words are taken out from the original:
• The Mid-town Community Court was established as a collaboration between the New York State Unified Court System and the Center for Court Innovation. The court works in partnership with local residents, businesses and social service agencies to organize community service projects and provide on-site social services, including drug treatment, mental health counseling, and job training.
In another example, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release says:
• High Point had its first face-to-face meeting with drug dealers, from the city’s West End neighborhood, on May 18th, 2004. The drug market shut down immediately and permanently, with a sustained 35% reduction in violent crime. High Point repeated the strategy in three additional markets over the next three years. There is virtually no remaining drug dealing in the city, and serious crime has fallen 20% citywide.
In Ms Harris’ book, the sentence was the same, except for the word “percent” instead of the symbol.
• High Point had its first face-to-face meeting with drug dealers, from the city’s West End neighborhood, on May 18th, 2004. The drug market shut down immediately and permanently, with a sustained 35 percent reduction in violent crime. High Point repeated the strategy in three additional markets over the next three years. There is virtually no remaining drug dealing in the city, and serious crime has fallen 20 percent citywide.
Mr. Weber said that in addition to lifting passages verbatim from other works without attribution, Ms. Harris also misused footnotes when copying directly from the source material.
“In many other instances, even when a source was cited with a footnote, the text was directly copied and pasted without using quotation marks. Quotation marks would have been the most transparent and honest approach, also in non-academic books,” he said. “Further signs of dishonesty may be evident when sources were copied, but specific details were altered, such as replacing a Subway store owner with a sandwich shop clerk (p. 124) or highlighting Southeast Asia in the context of the US gang problem (p. 184).”
Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, was highly critical of Ms. Harris’ alleged plagiarism.
“Lmao Kamala didn’t even write her own book!” Mr. Vance, who is the author of the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” wrote on social media. He said that he wrote his book “unlike Kamala Harris, who copied hers from Wikipedia.”
In another post, he mocked the possible media response to his X posts: “Cue the corporate media ‘fact checkers’: ‘Vance’s tweet is missing important context. Kamala Harris only copied some of her book from Wikipedia.’”
The Washington Times has reached out to the Harris campaign, Ms. Hamilton and the book’s publisher for comment.
Ms. Hamilton told The New York Post that she hadn’t “seen anything” regarding the allegations.
“I’m afraid I can’t talk to you right now, though, I’m in the middle of something,” she said. “Let me go try to figure that out.”
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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