Fox News contributor Monica Crowley claimed this week that the plagiarism scandal that scuttled her White House appointment had been “debunked,” but it’s still not clear to what she is referring.
Crowley, who was in line to serve as President Trump’s national security spokesperson, withdrew from the transition team in January after a series of reports showed she failed to give proper attribution to multiple outside sources used in her columns, books and Ph.D dissertation. In some cases, she included passages that were lifted word-for-word from other sources, and no citations were provided.
CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, whose team originally broke the story, maintains his company did its homework.
“Complete BS – Monica Crowley falsely claims our reporting on her (extensive) plagiarism was debunked. Nonsense,” he said. “No one has yet to point out a single inaccuracy in our reporting or asked for a correction on it.”
“It’s Monica Crowley v. reality,” Kaczynski added.
Crowley claimed Tuesday in an interview on Fox News that the plagiarism scandal was a ginned up political controversy. She also maintained she did nothing wrong.
“What happened to me was a despicable, straight-up political hit job,” she told Fox’s Sean Hannity, who did nothing to challenge her charge. “It’s been debunked, my editor has completely supported me and backed me up.”
The Washington Examiner has contacted Harper Collins and the Washington Times, where Crowley was a regular columnist until December 2016, and asked to be connected with editors who “completely” support and back up her work. Spokespersons for both organizations have not yet responded.
Crowley continued, “There is a very toxic, and is getting increasingly toxic, and poisonous atmosphere of personal destruction in Washington and in the media. It’s always sort of been there, but now it’s at a whole different level, and this is exactly why smart and good people do not want to go into government service.”
“The attack on me was a test,” she added. “What happened to me, what happened to Gen. [Mike] Flynn, what’s happened to Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions and others is all of a piece. There is a very dangerous and very effective destabilization campaign underway against this president, his administration and his agenda.”
“I hope the president understands this, having been a victim of this myself,” Crowley said. “They are out for blood.”
A CNN report published on Jan. 7 included several side-by-side comparisons showing the former Fox News contributor had quoted several outside sources word-for-word in her 2012 book, “What The (Bleep) Just Happened,” and failed to give proper attribution.
A separate CNN report published on Jan. 12 showed Crowley also failed to give proper attribution to lengthy passages included in her Ph.D. dissertation.
Crowley left the Trump transition team shortly after the plagiarism reports came out, and the publisher Harper Collins stopped halted sales of her 2012 book.
Harper Collins, which is connected to Fox News via News Corp., which is run by the Murdoch family, has not yet reversed its decision.
It’s unclear to what Crowley is referring when she said, “It’s been debunked.” She did not respond to the Examiner’s request for comment.
It’s possible she was referring to a National Review article published on Feb. 2, which argued that the CNN reports were “a major hit job.” However, this article is not the slam-dunk, absolve-all Crowley may think it is, if it is indeed the thing to which she is referring.
The National Review article, which was written by Andrew McCarthy, from whom Crowley regularly borrowed without giving proper attribution, uses both careful language (“If this happened …”), and it relies heavily on a questionable analysis posted to Facebook by an attorney named Lynn Chu.
Chu’s analysis wrongly characterized the scandal as a being an issue of paraphrasing, but the passages highlighted in the CNN reports show Crowley’s problem goes well beyond a simple rewording of outside sources. There’s a lot of straight-up cutting-and-pasting in some of the former Trump transition team member’s past work.
Even is the scandal were about paraphrasing, Chi herself conceded that excessive paraphrasing (like the kind seen in Crowley’s work) can be construed as plagiarism.
