Harris Accused of Plagiarizing Parts of 'Smart on Crime' Book

Chris Rufo, a conservative activist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute (Lean Right bias), highlighted an analysis from Austrian "plagiarism hunter" Dr. Stefan Weber in which Weber says Harris' co-written 2009 book Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer contained 27 instances of plagiarism. 

The Details: Weber alleged that throughout the 248-page book, "24 fragments are plagiarism from other authors, [and] 3 fragments are self-plagiarism from a work written with a co-author." Several times, he alleges, they pulled verbatim text from a source without using quotation marks. In another instance, he said "Kamala Harris fabricated a source reference, inventing a nonexistent page number. The self-promotional content from Goodwill Industries was copied verbatim without citing the source."

How the Media Covered It: The story was covered widely on the right and less on the left. The New York Times (Lean Left) downplayed the allegations, naming only five of the examples Rufo cited without mentioning the other cases, and adding that the publisher of Plagiarism Today said that the "errors were not serious." He later said, "I was unaware of a full dossier with additional allegations, which led some to accuse the New York Times of withholding that information from me. However, the article clearly stated that it was my ‘initial reaction’ to those allegations, not a complete analysis," and added that the allegations were "more serious" than he initially believed.