Biden Hit with New Plagiarism Allegation by Ex-Harvard Journal Editor
Democrat President Joe Biden has been hit with yet another plagiarism allegation, this time from a former editor of the Harvard Journal on Legislation.
Roger Severino claims to have discovered “shocking” examples of plagiarism by Biden.
Severino says he found instances of unattributed copying in an essay “written by” Biden more than two decades ago.
The allegations relate to an essay defending the Violence Against Women Act.
Biden supposedly penned the essay in 2000 during his tenure as a Delaware senator.
Severino took to Twitter/X to detail his findings, igniting a fresh controversy.
“My first assignment as a junior editor at the Harvard Journal on Legislation (1999-2000) was to cite check an article submitted by one Sen. Joseph R. Biden,” wrote Severino, who now serves as the vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation.
“I was shocked by the plagiarism I discovered.”
My first assignment as a junior editor at the Harvard Journal on Legislation (1999-2000) was to cite check an article submitted by one Sen. Joseph R. Biden. I was shocked by the plagiarism I discovered. 🧵 https://t.co/0CSqJBZR7E
— Roger Severino (@RogerSeverino_) September 4, 2023
During an interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters, Severino highlighted specific phrases that had raised his suspicions.
“Words like ‘herald of a new era’ tipped me off,” Severino explained.
“Like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, I’ve heard this before.’”
Severino’s accusations are just the latest in a long line of plagiarism claims against Biden, however.
Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post has also scrutinized Biden’s tendency to embellish facts during his speeches.
Addressing this pattern, Severino stated, “He tends to embellish, and he tends to lie, and as your segment showed, he has decades of history doing this.”
The crux of Severino’s allegations centers on Biden’s purported failure to properly credit Federal Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, the New York Post reported.
Biden is accused of lifting text from Motz’s dissenting opinion in the case of Brzonkala v. Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1999.
Motz wrote her opinion in the case where the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals declared a portion of the 1994 law as unconstitutional.
Severino contended that the published version of Biden’s essay included several citations from Motz’s opinion.
However, the attributions were reportedly inserted by the Harvard Journal’s editors who, in Severino’s view, were covering for Biden.
“He had lifted language straight out of a SCOTUS opinion, changed a couple of words, and called them his own,” Severino alleged.
“There were no quote marks and no footnote or anything else attributing the court as the source.”
President Biden has a history of embellishing, lying, and plagiarizing. Well, it turns out, there’s even more plagiarism than we thought.@RogerSeverino_ was a junior editor at the Harvard Journal when he told his editors he’d found more Biden plagiarism. They covered it up. pic.twitter.com/9hY7fA7QqI
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) September 8, 2023
Severino continued by asserting that Biden had engaged in a form of plagiarism known as “mosaic plagiarism.”
The issue is where a writer modifies a few words in a quote to make the act harder to detect.
According to Severino, “mosaic plagiarism” is an indication of “consciousness of guilt.”
Severino claimed to have brought the plagiarism concerns to the executive editor of the journal.
He recommended that they reject Biden’s article.
According to Severino, however, the editors decided to address the issue by adding proper attributions.
This move sought to effectively “fix” the plagiarism.
They acted as though the incident had never occurred, Severino said.
In response, White House spokeswoman Olivia Dalton issued a statement vehemently denying Severino’s allegations.
“The final article has appropriate citations, and that fact is not in dispute,” Dalton said.
“So I’m not about to further dignify ridiculous attacks on the president from decades ago.”
As president, Biden has continued a tradition of embellishing his personal tales in ways that cannot be verified or are directly refuted by contemporaneous accounts. @GlennKesslerWP breaks them down. https://t.co/AZQu07GLOE
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) September 3, 2023
Severino said he felt compelled to come forward with these allegations now because Biden has “been doing this for decades.”
“The American people have to know,” he added.
“He’s never owned up to his plagiarism scandals and his constant embellishments.”
Biden has faced past accusations of plagiarism, notably during his first presidential campaign in 1988.
During his first run for the White House, Biden was found to have lifted quotes from then-British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, misrepresenting his family’s history.
Biden eventually quit his campaign for the 1988 Democrat presidential nomination in September 1987, amid scrutiny of his dishonest record.
Kinnock, who has since moved past the plagiarism controversy, supported Biden wholeheartedly in the 2020 presidential election, The Guardian reported.
“Joe’s an honest guy,” Kinnock claimed.
