The left-leaning New York Times was accused of “lying about” plagiarism allegations against Vice President Kamala Harris to undermine an exclusive report by a conservative activist who called out the Democratic presidential candidate.
Christopher Rufo — who helped expose alleged plagiarism by Harvard president Claudine Gay that eventually led to her ouster — posted on Monday that several passages in Harris’ 2009 book, “Smart on Crime,” closely resembled or perfectly matched wording from other sources.
The Times followed with a story that noted Rufo found only “five sections” involving “about 500 words” that raised questions. It quoted plagiarism expert Jonathan Bailey, who said Rufo took relatively minor citation mistakes and tried to “make a bid deal of it.”
The “amount of plagiarism amounts to an error and not an intent to defraud,” Bailey, who runs the website “Plagiarism Today,” told the Times.
But after the Gray Lady published its story, Bailey wrote on his X account that his quotes were based on “information provided to me by the reporters” and that he had not done a full analysis of the book — written by Harris when she was California attorney general.
Rufo said he provided the Times the full analysis by Austrian researcher Dr. Stefan Weber, who found “18 allegations of varying severity” — a much more extensive sample than that cited by the Times.
“The New York Times is lying about my plagiarism story and I have the receipts to prove it,” Rufo, an academic at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, wrote on X on Tuesday in a lengthy post.
He accused the Times of having “deliberately withheld” the full analysis conducted by Weber to minimize the extent of the scandal.
When he asked the Times “politely for a correction,” the editor, Mary Suh, “had nothing but excuses,” Rufo said.
“And so, we’re going to fight this one out,” Rufo said, adding: “They should issue a correction, but, even if they do not, I will correct the record in public.”
The Post has sought comment from the Times.
In his original report Monday, Rufo posted screenshots of five side-by-side passages showing that Harris may have lifted wording from an Associated Press article from 2008, a Wikipedia article as drafted in 2008, a Bureau of Justice Assistance report from 2000, an Urban Institute report from 2004, and a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release describing a 2007 award.
In at least two of the instances, the source of the original verbiage is cited in footnotes.
But there were no quotation marks around the lifted words and in other instances passages appear to be wholly uncredited, such as the Urban Institute report.
The Times story was headlined “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages From Harris Book.” The sub-headline read: “A report by Christopher Rufo says the Democratic presidential nominee copied five short passages for her 2009 book on crime. A plagiarism expert said the lapses were not serious.”
The newspaper also appeared to insinuate that Rufo’s motive in publishing the plagiarism allegations were racist.
“Mr. Rufo is part of a loose confederation of conservative writers and activists who, during the past year, have tried to expose plagiarism among academics, many of whom have been Black scholars who work in the field of diversity and inclusion,” the Times wrote, adding: “Some academics … have characterized the campaign as racist.”
On Monday, Harris campaign spokesman James Singer said: “This is a book that’s been out for 15 years, and the vice president clearly cited sources and statistics in footnotes and endnotes throughout.”
In 2021, a story that then-Vice President-elect Harris told to Elle magazine drew scrutiny after readers noticed parallels to a similar one that was recounted by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965.
Additional Reporting by Steven Nelson