Lifting language from Wikipedia isn't the only instance of borrowing words for Paul. Paul pledges caution with words

A top adviser to Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday night that the Kentucky Republican would be “more cautious in presenting and attributing sources” in the future, after POLITICO confronted the senator’s office with fresh examples of Paul speeches that borrowed language from news reports without citing the original source.

POLITICO contacted Paul’s staff Thursday evening with multiple instances in which the popular conservative used language — either word for word or nearly verbatim — that had first appeared elsewhere.


Paul faced questions of plagiarism earlier this week for apparently lifting some language in a speech from the Wikipedia entry for the 1997 film “Gattaca.” The potential 2016 presidential candidate dismissed the initial report from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow as the work of “haters.” BuzzFeed also reported Tuesday that Paul had copied language from the Wikipedia entry on the movie “Stand and Deliver.”

The latest examples include a 2013 speech by Paul responding to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address. The senator said this, according to remarks distributed by his office: “Under President Obama, the ranks of America’s poor swelled to almost 1 in 6 people last year, reaching a new high as long-term unemployment left millions of Americans struggling and out of work.”

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That language exactly mirrored a 2011 report by The Associated Press that began: “The ranks of America’s poor swelled to almost 1 in 6 people last year, reaching a new high as long-term unemployment left millions of Americans struggling and out of work.”

In a second instance of questionable borrowing, Paul told an audience at Howard University about a young man, Ronald Holassie, whom he cited as a success story of the D.C. school voucher program.

“By sixth grade, Ronald Holassie was failing most of his classes, but through school choice he was able to attend a Catholic school in the D.C. area,” Paul told listeners, according to his website. “There, he learned that he had a natural gift for composing music, but before that, his reading level was so low that he had struggled to write lyrics.”

A 2010 passage in CitizenLink, the magazine of the social conservative group Focus on the Family, used nearly identical turns of phrase to recount Holassie’s story: “[Holassie] described public schools where fighting was more common than learning. By the sixth grade, Ronald was failing most of his classes. He has a natural gift for composing music, but was so far behind in reading that he struggled to write lyrics.”

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Paul’s team strenuously contested any suggestion that he was deliberately plagiarizing in his remarks. While he did not point to CitizenLink or the AP as the source of his language or information, his advisers stressed that Paul was relaying public information rather than presenting data as if he had discovered it on his own.

And even as Paul’s chief adviser promised greater caution in the future, the senator’s political operation also disputed the idea that he had done anything wrong.

“In the course of lengthy speeches, Sen. Paul has described facts and relayed examples that, of course, had been reported first elsewhere – in no way insinuating they were his own thoughts or ideas. If the text had been submitted for academic publication, of course it would have been footnoted. Only in Washington is something this trivial a source for liberal media angst,” said Paul adviser Doug Stafford, the senator’s former chief of staff.

Stafford continued: “While Sen. Paul doesn’t believe that this is the normal standard for speeches, going forward he will be more cautious in presenting and attributing sources.”

The ongoing attribution flap is shaping up to be an important test for Paul as he faces the heightened scrutiny of a budding presidential campaign. The tea party senator has rocketed to national prominence on the strength of his high-profile issue stands in the Senate: his sensational filibuster against the hypothetical use of drones against U.S. citizens, for example, and his current stand against Janet Yellen’s nomination to lead the Federal Reserve.

But Paul has also not been under the microscope as a candidate since his first and only race for office: the 2010 Senate campaign in which he won a stunning upset in the Republican primary and then defeated a Democratic general election opponent who sought unsuccessfully to use Paul’s quirky brand of libertarianism against him.

In an interview with Fusion anchor Jorge Ramos this week, Paul took a dismissive tone toward Maddow’s report on the “Gattaca” speech and the criticism stemming from it.

“The plot line from ‘Gattaca’ belongs to one person, the guy, the screenwriter, and I gave him credit for that,” Paul said. “You know, the person who is leading this attack, she’s been spreading hate on me for about three years now, and I don’t intend for it to go away, but I also don’t see her as an objective news source.”