Vice President Kamala Harris is under fire after a shocking report revealed that her 2009 book, Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer, contains several instances of plagiarism.
As reported by Trending Politics News [1], Conservative activist Christopher F. Rufo, known for his investigative work, dropped the bombshell on Monday, igniting a firestorm of controversy just as Harris hit the campaign trail once again.
Rufo’s report lays out detailed allegations that Harris, along with her ghostwriter Joan O’C Hamilton, lifted entire sections of text from various sources, including media reports, government documents, and even Wikipedia.
The book, which played a significant role in shaping Harris’s image as a criminal justice reformer during her run for California Attorney General, now stands at the center of a scandal threatening to damage her credibility.
EXCLUSIVE: Kamala Harris plagiarized at least a dozen sections of her criminal-justice book, Smart on Crime, according to a new investigation. The current vice president even lifted material from Wikipedia.
We have the receipts. 🧵
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 14, 2024 [2]
One of the most glaring examples of plagiarism, according to Rufo, involves Harris borrowing verbatim from a high school graduation rate report published by NBC News. The uncited material in question mirrors both the structure and statistics found in an AP/NBC News report, with no attribution provided. This raises serious ethical concerns, especially as Harris used this data to bolster her arguments about education and crime reduction.
We can begin with a passage in which Harris discusses high school graduation rates. Here, she lifted verbatim language from an uncited AP/NBC News report: pic.twitter.com/pZv5mD3m5t [3]
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 14, 2024 [4]
Rufo’s investigation also uncovered that a significant portion of Harris’s discussion on drug prevention strategies in High Point, North Carolina, was lifted from a press release by John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The detailed paragraphs in Harris’s book, which praised the initiative’s success in reducing crime, were copied almost word-for-word from the original press release without any mention of the source. Passing off these words as her own appears to be a blatant violation of academic integrity.
As reported by Rufo, Harris’s reliance on Wikipedia, of all sources, adds an ironic twist to the saga. In one chapter, Harris allegedly took entire passages from a Wikipedia entry about a New York court program without verification or citation. To make matters worse, she included a misleading statistic related to illegal vending in New York City that was misinterpreted from the Wikipedia article.
In another section of the book, Harris, without proper attribution, reproduced extensive sections from a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release. She and her co-author passed off the language as their own, copying multiple paragraphs virtually verbatim. Here is the… pic.twitter.com/9FpsxQE8Sz [5]
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 14, 2024 [6]
The accusations do not end there. Rufo points out other instances where Harris allegedly borrowed text from government reports and nonprofit organizations, including one instance where she copied promotional language from an Urban Institute report without acknowledgment. While it’s common for public figures to use ghostwriters, Harris’s failure to give proper credit to original authors undermines her integrity.
In his report, Rufo calls for Harris and her publisher to issue a public correction and retract the plagiarized sections. With Harris continuing to pursue higher office, these revelations could cast a long shadow over her political career, particularly as conservatives are quick to highlight hypocrisy among political elites.
[7]As reported by Rufo, “Kamala Harris has built her public persona on a unique mix of vague platitudes and trendy catchphrases, but it seems even that rhetoric might not be entirely her own.”