Harris lifted language from Republican attorney in her 2007 congressional testimony
By Em Steck, CNN
(CNN) — Kamala Harris lifted language from a Republican attorney when she testified in front of Congress in 2007, a CNN review of her testimony finds.
Experts CNN spoke with said that the instance, first reported by conservative news outlet the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday, raises concern but does not constitute a serious example of plagiarism.
The instance occurred when Harris was district attorney of San Francisco. She testified at the time before the House Judiciary Committee in support of the John R. Justice Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act of 2007, which would have created a student loan repayment program for state and local prosecutors and public defenders.
Her prepared testimony lifted paragraphs from the prepared testimony of Paul Logli, then a Republican state’s attorney from Illinois and chairman of the board of the National District Attorneys Association, who testified before the Senate two months earlier. The paragraphs use the same survey and nearly identical language to each other.
At the time, Harris served on the board of directors of the National District Attorneys Association, according to her testimony. CNN reached out to Logli for comment but did not receive a response.
Logli told the Free Beacon that he remembers the organization researched and drafted his opening statement. He said the organization likely used similar statements to be consistent with its positions.
“Kamala Harris represented California state prosecutors as a member of the Board of Directors of NDAA and was testifying in that capacity two months later before the House Judiciary Committee,” he told the Beacon. “I believe she also relied on NDAA staff support for her opening statement.”
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
“It’s definitely not a serious case of plagiarism, to put it mildly. We’re researching it now because she’s running for president. We can argue if it’s ethical or not, but I bet it’s extremely common practice [in politics],” said Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism expert who runs the site Plagiarism Today.
The new instance comes after a conservative activist accused Harris last week of plagiarism in her co-authored 2009 book. CNN reviewed several of the passages and found that Harris and her co-author failed to properly attribute language to sources.
The Free Beacon also found that as the California attorney general, Harris authorized the publication of a 2012 report on human trafficking that presented an anonymized example of sex trafficking as a real case in San Francisco, lifting language from a nonprofit’s website in the process that they attributed in the report.
“To apply the high expectation of originality found in journalism or academic writing to political speeches is misguided,” said Michael Dougherty, a professor of philosophy at Ohio Dominican University who wrote a book on plagiarism. “A precise use of the label ‘plagiarism’ requires a context in which originality is rightly expected.”
The-CNN-Wire
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