'Verbatim copying': Bombshell report says Hegseth broke Princeton's academic honesty rules

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can add plagiarism to his list of things he's been formally accused of.

Trump's pick for the top Pentagon spot has previously faced allegations of sexual assault and of having a drinking problem. Now it's being reported that, while in school at Princeton, he copied other pieces for his thesis.

The local Daily Princetonian flagged a particular sentence in the senior thesis authored by Hegseth. In that piece, Hegseth wrote in part, "Bush looked distracted and somber but continued to listen to the second-graders."

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"This sentence is notable for recapping the precise moment President George W. Bush was informed of the 9/11 attacks. But it is also notable because it is nearly identical to one published by The Washington Post in 2001, two years before Hegseth wrote his thesis," the bombshell report from Saturday states. "A review of Hegseth’s thesis by The Daily Princetonian, in consultation with three experts on plagiarism, found eight instances of uncredited material, sham paraphrasing, and verbatim copying. But while the three experts all said that the passages violated Princeton’s academic honesty regulations, they differed on whether the violations were serious or too minor to matter."

The report goes on to quote experts on the extent of the copying, and suggest the severity of the violations is being debated.

"An analysis of Hegseth’s thesis through several publicly available plagiarism detection models flagged a total of 12 passages spread out throughout the paper. To further evaluate the passages, the ‘Prince’ consulted three experts in plagiarism research and copyright who have previously analyzed prominent cases of plagiarism involving politicians or have conducted extensive research on academic integrity. All reviewers assessed the thesis without prior knowledge of the author’s identity," it states.

The report adds, "That manual review found eight instances of uncredited material, sham paraphrasing, and verbatim copying, according to the three experts. The four other passages that they flagged, the experts said, were not deemed to be of significance on a standalone basis, but fit a broader pattern of some form of plagiarism."

Read the full report here.