Kamala Harris ‘Smart on Crime’ Plagiarism Claims: Everything We Know

Vice President Kamala Harris is under scrutiny due to allegations of plagiarism in a book that she coauthored in 2009.
According to a new report by Dr. Stefan Weber, Austrian “plagiarism hunter,” Harris and co-author Joan O’C Hamilton had 27 “fragments of plagiarism” in the book Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer.
In the 49-page report, Weber and his team also allege that the Democratic presidential nominee and her coauthor copied and pasted from a Wikipedia article for the book.
Smart on Crime, which totals 248 pages, was written in the run-up to Harris’ campaign for California attorney general. According to its description, the book “shatters the old distinctions rooted in false choices and myths” and “presents practical solutions for making the criminal justice system truly—not just rhetorically—tough.”
Weber, a professor in Austria, accused Harris of reproducing verbatim language from sources such as news articles and studies in his report.
“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 the analysis.
“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).”
It is unclear whether Harris and Hamilton used a ghostwriter for the book.
Newsweek has emailed the Harris campaign, Hamilton and the book’s publisher, Chronicle Books, on Monday afternoon for comment.
One particular mention of New York City’s Midtown Community Court in the book pertains to its use of language and structure that closely mirrors a Wikipedia article, indicating a lack of proper citation and paraphrasing, Weber alleges. His analysis highlights minor and serious infractions, claiming that some text was directly copied from sources without adequate acknowledgment.
Weber’s report also shows specific plagiarism allegations regarding a mention of the West Palm Beach Community Court in Harris’ book.
“After copying from the Wikipedia article, she continues by copying from the PDF linked in the Wikipedia article’s first reference. Although she acknowledges at the end of the book that she took examples of community courts from that report (without providing the URL), the copied sections are presented as if they were her own words. The word-for-word copying still requires quotation marks to maintain proper attribution,” Weber wrote.
The report points out that while some parts of the appropriated content may be cited, not enough of the original source is acknowledged, a technique known as “pawn sacrifice plagiarism.” A citation about the “CSI Effect” in the book masks the extent of reliance on the original source, according to Weber.
He also notes an account in the book where Harris shares an anecdote about her childhood that has close similarities to a story told by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965. Harris recounts a moment when she was separated from her parents during a civil rights march in Oakland, California. As she described the moment her parents found her, the story begins to closely resemble a narrative shared by the renowned civil rights leader. Harris mentioned, “My mother tells the story about how I’m fussing, and she’s like, ‘Baby, what do you want? What do you need?’ And I just looked at her and I said, ‘Fweedom,'” the book states.
In a 1965 Playboy magazine interview, the civil rights icon said he witnessed a similar interaction between a young Black girl and a white police officer.
“I will never forget a moment in Birmingham when a White policeman accosted a little Negro girl, seven or eight years old, who was walking in a demonstration with her mother,” King told the magazine.
“‘What do you want?’ the policeman asked her gruffly, and the little girl looked at him straight in the eye and answered, ‘Fee-dom,'” he continued.
“She couldn’t even pronounce it, but she knew. It was beautiful! Many times when I have been in sorely trying situations, the memory of that little one has come into my mind, and has buoyed me.”
Harris retold the same story in a 2021 Elle magazine interview and in her 2019 book, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, according to 2021 reporting by the New York Post.
Weber also claims that in 2009, Harris gave a “live” interview about the book to CBS, “which in parts consisted of a prior interview for another media which in turn contains many verbatim text chunks from her book.”
The “plagiarism hunter,” who has previously taken aim at alleged plagiarism of politicians in his home country, said this is unethical.
“Some say this is rather common in the US (call it content syndication?), but I would never have the idea to simply copy and paste paragraphs from my current book when I am interviewed on the topic of my book. For my standards, it is also unethical to reproduce text chunks from an older interview verbatim in a newer one. Different media should have different content. In sum, it seems to be a rather ‘cheap’ way of producing content,” Weber wrote.
Conservative activist Christopher Rufo detailed Weber’s findings in a post on X, formerly Twitter, which was reposted by Ohio U.S. Senator JD Vance, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s running mate.
“Lmao Kamala didn’t even write her own book!” Vance commented. He further added, “I wrote my own book, unlike Kamala Harris, who copied hers from Wikipedia. Cue the corporate media ‘fact-checkers’: ‘Vance’s tweet is missing important context. Kamala Harris only copied some of her book from Wikipedia.'”
Donald Trump Jr. also weighed in on X about the report, posting, “yikes!” while adding: “More evidence that Kamala Harris is a fraud!!!”