Kamala Harris Plagiarism Allegations “More Serious” Than I Thought, Admits New York Times Expert

Kamala Harris’s plagiarism is “more serious” than it first seemed, a New York Times expert has admitted after he initially downplayed more than a dozen examples of copied paragraphs in her book. The Telegraph has the story.

Ms Harris was on Monday accused of plagiarising several sections of her book on crime, including a story once told by Martin Luther King Jr.

More than a dozen sections of the book were apparently copied from various sources, including Wikipedia.

But The New York Times downplayed the story, focussing on the conservative academic Christopher Rufo, who brought it to light.

The newspaper’s headline, “Conservative activist seizes on passages from Harris book”, was criticised by Republicans for failing to scrutinise the allegations.

The story quoted Jonathan Bailey, a “plagiarism expert”, who said the extracts were “an error and not an intent to defraud”, and the Harris campaign, which accused Mr Rufo of launching an attack on the vice-president for political reasons. …

Writing on his blog Plagiarism Today on Thursday, Mr. Bailey said that he had only been given five examples of the alleged plagiarism by the New York Times, and that he had not had a chance to review the full report accusing her of stealing passages from other sources.

Worth reading in full.