WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is facing allegations of plagiarism after numerous passages from the Democratic presidential nominee’s 2009 book “Smart on Crime” were discovered to closely resemble — or perfectly match — wording from other sources.
Harris, then San Francisco’s district attorney, wrote the book promoting a reform-minded approach to prosecuting crimes alongside ghostwriter Joan O’C. Hamilton — who told The Post when contacted Monday that she was surprised to learn about the alleged copying.
Conservative activist Christopher Rufo published the allegations Monday and credited an investigation by Austrian “plagiarism hunter” Stefan Weber — with Rufo posting screenshots on X of five examples in which the wording in the book closely resembles other sources.
In each instance, the purported source material predates Harris’ book publication date.
The five side-by-side passages indicate 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 — however, quotation marks are not around the apparently copied words and in other instances passages appear to be wholly uncredited, such as the Urban Institute report.
“Oh gosh,” Harris’ ghostwriter told The Post over the phone shortly after the allegations were published.
“I haven’t seen anything,” she added. “I’m afraid I can’t talk to you right now, though, I’m in the middle of something. Let me go try to figure that out.”
A report compiled by Weber and published by Rufo said there were numerous other issues detected in the book.
“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 (Goodwill Industries was her ‘primary partner’ on in [sic] the ‘Back on Track’ program),” Weber wrote.
“In many other instances, even when a source was cited with a footnote, the text was directly copied and pasted without using quotation marks. Quotation marks would have been the most transparent and honest approach, also in non-academic books. Further signs of dishonesty may be evident when sources were copied but specific details were altered, such as replacing a Subway store owner with a sandwich shop clerk (p. 124) or highlighting Southeast Asia in the context of the US gang problem (p. 184).”
Spokespeople for both Harris’ presidential campaign and her vice presidential office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Plagiarism allegations often are fatal to the careers of journalists and academics, but politicians have survived similar controversies in the past — most notably retiring President Biden, who plagiarized a paper during his first year in law school, and during his 1987 run for the presidency misappropriated the family history and public remarks of British politician Neil Kinnock.