Opinion | The author's opinion does not necessarily reflect Sarah Palin's view.
Conservative activist Christopher Rufo recently claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris potentially plagiarized parts of her 2009 book, “Smart on Crime.” Rufo made the claim based on an internal email from Harris’ publisher, Chronicle Books, which suggested they were in damage control mode.
“BREAKING: Kamala Harris’s publisher, Chronicle Books, is in damage control mode. The company accidentally sent my team an internal communication indicating that VP Lauren Hoffman is requiring that all inquiries about Harris’s plagiarism go through the higher ups,” Rufo wrote online.
The email instructed staff to direct all inquiries about the alleged plagiarism to higher-ups.
“Per Lauren Hoffman (VP, Executive Director of Marketing and Publicity) please do not respond or comment on any inquiries regarding SMART ON CRIME, and please continue to forward them directly to me. Really appreciate your help on this it is a sensitive topic,” the email read.
While Rufo’s claims gained attention, mainstream media, and especially the New York Times, criticized him. The Times quoted a plagiarism expert who deemed the lifted passages “not serious.”
In response, Rufo noted a contradiction, arguing that the acknowledgment of plagiarism was downplayed by The Times.
“Somebody hang this in the Louvre,” Rufo said of The Times’ article. “The New York Times claims that I ‘seize[d] on’ Kamala Harris’s serial plagiarism. Admits later in the story that it is, in fact, plagiarism. And then calls noticing that fact ‘racist.’”
“The spin is already on from Kamala’s media lapdogs at the New York Times. It was a fiery but mostly peaceful plagiarism!” the Trump War Room X account wrote.
Senator JD Vance also commented, implying that Harris copied her content from Wikipedia.
“Hi, I’m JD Vance. I wrote my own book, unlike Kamala Harris, who copied hers from Wikipedia,” Vance said.
