Politico broke the news Monday that Monica Crowley, Donald Trump’s soon-to-be senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council, plagiarized a whole bunch of information for her PhD at Columbia University in 2000.
According to the Politico investigation and report, Crowley used a number of excerpts from other sources either without formal bibliographic notation, or copied statements entirely from other sources without any attribution whatsoever. If you’ve ever read an academic syllabus in your life, you know this is a big no-no.
Wonderfully, considering this woman will soon head a major political entity advising Trump on foreign and domestic military policy, this isn’t the first time Crowley has been caught turning a blind eye to issues of academic integrity! Just this past weekend, CNN reported on “upwards of 50 examples of plagiarism from numerous sources” in the case of Crowley’s 2012 book, What the (Bleep) Just Happened, a critique of the U.S. under Barack Obama’s presidency.
Crowley also faced accusations of plagiarism in 1999 for an article that she wrote for The Wall Street Journal because of its similarities to another piece for a conservative magazine from the previous year, according to CNN. Crowley responded stating that she “did not, nor would [she] ever, use material from a source without citing it.”
WELL. According to the Politico exposé, that’s exactly what Crowley did. And she did it A LOT.
Donald Trump’s transition team has responded to the accusations, neither confirming nor denying them, but only saying that the stories of Crowley’s indiscretions are political power plays. “Any attempt to discredit Monica is nothing more than a politically motivated attack that seeks to distract from the real issues facing this country,” the transition team told CNN.
Monica Crowley has not responded personally to the latest slew of accusations, and Donald Trump’s Twitter has yet to go on a rampage about “dishonest media.” (It’s only a matter of time.)
This obviously is not dishonest—there is PROOF. Donald Trump might need a quick refresher on what proof and the truth are, though. He also might want to rethink (for the millionth time??) his latest presidential administration pick.