That comes after the vice president last week published Martin Luther King Jr.’s more than a dozen chapters of the book that helped launch his political career. and it came after Wikipedia was accused of plagiarizing various sources, including a speech by him.

The book, published in 2009, appears to borrow from King with an anecdote from his childhood during the civil rights movement.

The 59-year-old wrote: “My mother would laugh when she told me about a time when I was a little kid and I was fussy. She leaned over and asked me: “Kamala, what’s wrong? What do you want?” and I shrieked, “Fweedom.”

The story bears close similarities to the one shared by the civil rights leader, as the New York Post previously reported.

“I will never forget the moment in Birmingham when a white police officer attacked a little black girl, about seven or eight years old, who was attending a demonstration with her mother,” King told Playboy magazine in 1965.

“‘What do you want?’ the police asked her sternly and the little girl looked directly into her eyes and replied, ‘Fee-dom'”

‘Serious violations’

Stefan Weber, an Austrian academic who has been called a “plagiarism buster”, claimed that plagiarism in Ms Harris’s book ranged from “minor infractions” to more “serious infractions”.

The claims were initially denied by major news outlets, including The New York Times, which suggested the similarities were “an error and not a fraudulent intent.” However, Jonathan Bailey, the “plagiarism expert” mentioned in the newspaper’s report, admitted that the allegations were “more serious” than they seemed at first glance.

Addressing the latest allegations, Mr Bailey told The Telegraph: “This is an absolutely clear case of plagiarism.

“Politicians and district attorneys copy each other all the time, but it’s very rare that it’s someone from an unrelated district and it comes from a political rival.”