Responding to reports suggesting that a section of his book and portions of his speeches have been lifted from other sources, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) lamented Sunday that he couldn’t challenge the “hacks and haters” accusing him of plagiarism to a duel.
After several reports this week showed that some of the Kentucky senator’s speeches had been copied from Wikipedia and other news articles, a BuzzFeed article on Saturday indicated that an entire section of his 2013 book, “Government Bullies,” had been plagiarized from a Heritage Foundation study.
But during an appearance Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Paul wasn’t exactly contrite.
“The footnote police have really been dogging me for the last week. I will admit that. And I will admit, sometimes we haven’t footnoted things properly,” Paul said. “In fact, I’ve given thousands of speeches and I don’t think I’ve ever footnoted any of those speeches.”
He added that speeches should not be held to the same academic standard as a scientific research paper, arguing that it’s unfair to question his ethics.
“In some of the other things that are now going to pop up under thousands of things I’ve written, yeah, there are times when they have been sloppy or not correct or we’ve made an error,” Paul said.
“But the difference is, I take it as an insult and I will not lie down and say people can call me dishonest, misleading or misrepresenting. I have never intentionally done so. And, like I say, if dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know, it’d be a duel challenge, but I can’t do that because I can’t hold office in Kentucky.”
“But I think I’m being unfairly targeted by a bunch of hacks and haters. And I’m just not going to put up with people casting aspersions on my character,” he added later.
