Elise Stefanik Accused of Plagiarizing Letter by Democratic Colleague Mere Hours After She Denounced ‘Plagiarist’ Harvard President

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Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) accused Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) of plagiarizing one of her letters on Tuesday, just hours after Stefanik denounced Harvard University President Claudine Gay as “a plagiarist.”

After the embattled Harvard University professor was hit with accusations of plagiarism this week, Stefanik protested the college’s decision to stand with Gay.

“This is a moral failure of Harvard’s leadership and higher education leadership at the highest levels,” complained Stefanik. “And the only change they have made to their code of conduct, where they failed to condemn calls for genocide of the Jewish people, the only update to the code of conduct is to allow a plagiarist as the president of Harvard.”

Mere hours later, however, Stefanik was hit with her own accusation of plagiarism.

“Can anyone spot the difference between the first 3 paragraphs of these two letters…?” tweeted Manning. “One is my letter, and one is @RepStefanik plagiarizing my letter to try and get her 15 minutes of fame. Don’t take my word for it, see for yourself.”

Manning then shared photos of two letters which were almost word-for-word identical in the first three paragraphs.

The congresswoman continued:

I led this letter to the boards of Penn, Harvard, & MIT following last week’s Education and Workforce Committee hearing on campus antisemitism, urging policy evaluation and changes regarding university codes of conduct.

When I shared my letter with @RepStefanik to try to make this a bipartisan effort, she made it clear with her “edits” that she didn’t care about protecting Jewish students. All she cared about was calling for the resignation of university presidents to score political points.

The biggest difference between these two letters:

I am working to make real changes to university codes of conduct so Jewish students and faculty are protected from hate.

Rep. Stefanik is trying to get a soundbite & media hits.

In a statement, Stefanik responded:

Desperate and deranged Democrats are now attacking us for uniting the country around calls for these university presidents to be fired.

Here are the facts: Congresswoman Kathy Manning approached me on the House Floor with a rough draft for a joint letter to the boards of MIT, Harvard, & Penn. I told her I would like to review and would likely have many edits to strengthen the language.

My office sent back significant edits to the Manning office, who went radio silent while we circulated it among Republican Members.

Our offices then decided to go in different directions with two separate versions of the letter when Rep. Manning did not want to call for the firing of the presidents among other significant edits she refused to accept. This is something that happens everyday on Capitol Hill.

Our updated version of the stronger letter with significant edits got much more bipartisan support because it was right thing to do.

Stefanik claimed, “Because Kathy Manning got much less support for her weaker letter, she is now trying to do a hit piece to help panicked Democrats who are clearly on the wrong side of history protecting these university presidents – meanwhile, the mainstream media is refusing to cover the actual plagiarism of Claudine Gay.”