Vice President Kamala Harris has been accused of plagiarizing content from a Republican district attorney in Illinois.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Harris described how prosecutors could create a student loan repayment program in a 2007 statement to the House Judiciary Committee. The matter pertained to the John R. Justice Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act of 2007.
Harris described how “debt-addled prosecutors often decamp to the private sector a few years into the job, lured by the prospect of higher pay that could be used to pay off law school debt,” the Free Beacon reported.
Harris wrote, “There are numerous criminal cases that are particularly difficult because of the dynamics involved. To name just a few—child abuse, elder neglect, domestic violence, identity theft and public corruption. The stakes are simply too high to allow any attorney other than experienced prosecutors to handle these matters.”
The majority of her testimony was taken from Paul Logli of Winnebago County, Illinois.
Nearly 80% of her statement was copied from Logli, the report said.
Logli told the Free Beacon that the National District Attorneys Association researched and drafted his statement, which Harris later copied.
“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 said. “I believe she also relied on NDAA staff support for her opening statement.”
Logli noted that the “similar content of our statements was an effort by NDAA to be entirely consistent in the positions we presented to both Houses of Congress on behalf of the 3500 state and local prosecutors we represented on a national level.”
The Free Beacon’s report went on to detail other instances where Harris took content from other sources, including a fictionalized story from a nonprofit organization.
The report comes as journalist Christopher Rufo recently accused Harris of plagiarizing “at least a dozen sections of her criminal justice book, Smart on Crime.”
