Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris just cannot seem to conjure up an honest, truthful, original thought of her own. She’s facing yet more allegations of plagiarism, this time concerning congressional testimony she delivered in 2007. The testimony is basically copy-and-paste from testimony that was once given by a Republican district attorney, says a report from Newsweek. The folks at the Washington Free Beacon originally published the story, however, Newsweek did an independent investigation and discovered their findings to be true. Harris really did rip off a GOP attorney’s testimony.
The report revealed that almost every single word of the 1,500 word testimony from Harris was taken straight from the testimony given by Winnebago County, Illinois District Attorney Paul Logi. Of course, a few changes were made and some additions sprinkled in here and there, but essentially, she stole the man’s work and tried to pass it off as her own. What kind of person does this sort of thing? I’ll tell you. The kind who doesn’t have a clue what they’re doing in politics and established their career by sleeping around.
In April 2007, Harris, then-district attorney of San Francisco, testified before the House Judiciary Committee in support of the John R. Justice Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act, a bill aimed to offer student loan repayment to state and local prosecutors to help retain legal talent. In a written statement, she said that many prosecutors, burdened by law school debt, leave for better-paying jobs in the private sector after a few years. This has left district attorneys’ offices short-staffed, forcing inexperienced attorneys to take on complex cases.
While Harris’ statement was concise and pragmatic, 80 percent of it closely matched Logli’s testimony, which he delivered to the Senate Judiciary Committee two months earlier on the same issue. The two statements shared similar language, structure, and even the same typographical errors.
Newsweek then went on to reveal that their investigation confirmed the reporting of the Free Beacon after they compared the two documents and found that 1,200 of the 1,5000 words that were in Harris’ testimony were copied from Logli’s testimony. This included whole paragraphs that advocated for student loan relief in order to keep experienced prosecutors involved in public service.
“There are numerous criminal cases that are particularly difficult because of the dynamics involved,” Harris said—a statement nearly identical to Logli’s testimony. Both statements argued that student loan forgiveness was crucial for keeping experienced prosecutors in public service, citing the same data and making the same points in the same order.
Logli, a Republican, submitted his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2007, while Harris delivered hers to the House Judiciary Committee in April of that year. Despite being presented to different chambers of Congress, the testimonies were strikingly similar. Harris’ statement contained only a few additional paragraphs, which did little to disguise the broader similarities.
Logi, who retired in 2021, has not issued any public comments regarding the allegations against Harris.
The Free Beacon also pointed out a report concerning human trafficking from when Harris was the attorney general of California. Apparently, she included a case study in her report that was totally made up. The case in question described a young woman who was forced to be a prostitute, but was later rescued by police, which was sourced from the Polaris Project, an organization — nonprofit — that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
“However, Harris presented the story as if it had occurred in California, while the original account was a fictionalized example from Washington, D.C., created for illustrative purposes. Additionally, the report found that Harris had copied a paragraph directly from Wikipedia without proper attribution,” Newsweek said in its article.