Earlier today Sheriff Clarke, who says he’s been asked by Trump to join an office at Homeland Security, attacked CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski after apparently getting an email asking for a comment on their story alleging plagiarism in his thesis.
This @CNN hack @KFILE oppo research MO is to accuse plagiarism. I’m next. Did it to Rand Paul, Monica Crowley et al. https://t.co/KgoHKermpe
— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) May 20, 2017
Ample evidence of my previous tweet on @CNN political hack @KFILE. Guy is a sleaze bag. I’m on to him folks. https://t.co/D1kV8kg80G
— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) May 20, 2017
Kaczynski responded:
@SheriffClarke .@SheriffClarke is this your response to our comment request, do you dispute any of the examples as we asked in our email?
— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) May 20, 2017
Then this:
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/866072491051163648
And then he dropped the story:
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/866075038553919489
Now, the accusations are pretty technical.
In all instances reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Clarke lifts language from sources and credits them with a footnote, but does not indicate with quotation marks that he is taking the words verbatim.
So they’re credited, but not properly indicated. That’s not quite as bad as outright theft.
However, it does seem to be against the college’s rules:
According to guidelines on plagiarism posted on the Naval Postgraduate School’s website, “If a passage is quoted verbatim, it must be set off with quotation marks (or, if it is a longer passage, presented as indented text), and followed by a properly formulated citation. The length of the phrase does not matter. If someone else’s words are sufficiently significant to be worth quoting, then accurate quotation followed by a correct citation is essential, even if only a few words are involved.”
So they scrubbed it from their website, which is a bad sign for the Sheriff:
@KFILE Clarke’s thesis has now been removed by the Naval Postgraduate School. https://t.co/SBoXBgSBVN pic.twitter.com/AMf28FQZNe
— Adam Steinbaugh (@adamsteinbaugh) May 20, 2017
He has not responded yet. Remember, similar charges kept Monica Crowley out of the administration, even though she denies the charges to this day. They tried the same with Gorsuch, but he stayed on. So will Clarke be a Crowley, or a Gorsuch? I’m inclined to the former, since the plagiarism was on a thesis on Homeland Security, the very department he wants to join. Also there’s some question as to whether his offer is official – that gives the admin more room to deny it if they want to….