The left-leaning New York Times has been accused of “lying” with plagiarism allegations against Vice President Kamala Harris for questioning an exclusive report by a conservative activist who criticized the Democratic presidential candidate.
Krzysztof Rufo — who helped expose alleged plagiarism by Harvard President Claudine Gay, which ultimately led to her ouster — published on Monday that several passages from Harris' 2009 book “Smart on Crime” closely resemble or perfectly match wording from other sources .
The Times then ran an article noting that Rufo found only “five sections” of “about 500 words” that raised questions. She quoted plagiarism expert Jonathan Bailey, who said Rufo made relatively minor citation errors and was trying to “make a big deal out of it.”
“The scale of plagiarism indicates error, not intent to deceive,” said Bailey, who runs the website Plagiarism Today.
However, after the Gray Lady story was published, Bailey wrote on his X account that his quotes were based on “information provided to me by reporters” and that he had not conducted a full analysis of the book – written by Harris while she was a prosecutor in California.
Rufo said he provided the Times with a full analysis by Austrian researcher Dr. Stefan Weber, who found “18 allegations of varying severity” – a much larger sample than the one cited by the Los Angeles Times.
“The New York Times is lying about my plagiarism story, and I have the receipts to prove it,” Rufo, a research fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute, wrote in a lengthy post for X on Tuesday.
He accused the Times of “deliberately withholding” Weber's full analysis to minimize the scale of the scandal.
When he “politely asked the Times for a correction,” editor Mary Suh “had nothing but excuses,” Rufo said.
“So we're going to fight it,” Rufo said, adding: “They should issue a correction, but even if they don't, I will correct the recording publicly.”
The Post has reached out to the Los Angeles Times for comment.
In his Monday report, Rufo included screenshots of five adjacent passages showing that Harris may have changed the wording from an Associated Press article from 2008, a 2008 version of the Wikipedia article, a 2000 Bureau of Justice Assistance report, and an Urban Institute report since 2004 and John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release 2007 award description
In at least two cases, the source of the original vocabulary is given in footnotes.
However, quotation marks were not included around the raised words, and in other cases, passages appear to be completely uncredited, such as the Urban Institute report.
The Times article was headlined by “Conservative activist uses excerpts from Harris book.” The subtitle read: “Christopher Rufo Report Says Democratic Presidential Candidate Copied Five Short Excerpts from Her 2009 Crime Book. A plagiarism expert concluded that the deficiencies were not serious.”
The newspaper also seemed to suggest that Rufo's motives for publishing the plagiarism allegations were racist.
“You. Rufo is part of a loose confederation of conservative writers and activists who over the past year have tried to expose plagiarism among scientists, many of whom are Black scientists working on issues of diversity and inclusion,” The Times wrote, adding: “Some scientists… characterized the campaign as racist.”
On Monday, Harris, campaign spokesman James Singer said: “This is a book that has been in print for 15 years, and the vice president clearly cited sources and statistics in the footnotes and at the end.”
In 2021, a story that then-Vice President-elect Harris told Elle Magazine gained attention when readers noticed similarities to a similar one told by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965.
Last year, Rufo exposed Gay, a former dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences who later became president of the university.
In 2004, Gay wrote a research paper containing assessments similar to a 2000 paper written by another scholar.
Gay, who came under fire for her handling of anti-Israel protests and an alleged increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus following the Hamas attacks last October 7, ultimately resigned from her position.
Additional reporting by Steven Nelson
