Book by Trump appointee Monica Crowley pulled by publisher after plagiarism claims

NEW YORK, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- A book written by conservative commentator and Donald Trump appointee Monica Crowley is being pulled from circulation following claims that parts of it appear to be plagiarized.

HarperCollins said Tuesday it was removing her 2012 book "What the (Bleep) Just Happened? The Happy Warrior's Guide to the Great American Comeback," from the market.

"The book, which has reached the end of its natural sales cycle, will no longer be offered for purchase until such time as the author has the opportunity to source and revise the material," the publisher told CNN.

A report by CNN this week said at least 50 instances of plagiarism had been found in the four-year-old book, which is a scathing critique of President Barack Obama's administration. The report said the book contains material lifted from columnists, reports, articles and think tanks.

A conservative commentator for Fox News Channel, Crowley has been appointed by Trump to serve as deputy adviser for strategic communications and speech writing at the National Security Agency.

Crowley did not immediately comment on the removal of her book, but Trump's transition team has painted the claims as attempts to discredit the incoming GOP administration.

"Any attempt to discredit Monica is nothing more than a politically motivated attack that seeks to distract from the real issues facing this country," it said in a statement.

About 23,000 copies of the book have been sold since its release and HarperCollins' action will affect only a small number of paperback copies still on the market, The Wall Street Journal reported.

This isn't the first time Crowley, 48, has been accused of borrowing from other sources without attribution.

Politico reported Monday that her 2000 Ph.D. dissertation at Columbia University also plagiarized other sources.

"In some instances, Crowley footnoted her source but did not identify with quotation marks the text she was copying directly. In other instances, she copied text or heavily paraphrased with no attribution at all," Politico's report said.

The dissertation -- an assessment of U.S. foreign policy toward China under presidents Harry Truman and Richard Nixon -- could violate university policy that bars both intentional and unintentional plagiarism, and could potentially result in the school revoking Crowley's doctorate degree.

A year earlier, she was accused of plagiarizing material for a column she wrote for The Wall Street Journal about Nixon, for whom she served as an editorial aide before his death.

"There are striking similarities in phraseology between 'The Day Richard Nixon Said Goodbye,' an editorial feature [written] by Monica Crowley, and a 1988 article by [WSJ contributor] Paul Johnson in Commentary magazine," the Journal stated four days after the 1999 column appeared. "Had we known of the parallels, we would not have published the article."