The Washington Post is currently running a hit piece on Betsy DeVos, which went live at the same time that the hearing was supposed to start (10 a.m.). The piece claims that some of the answers on a several-hundred question form were similar to statements made by others before.

Of course, they are calling questionnaire answers “plagiarism.”

In answering a set of questions from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on how she would address bullying of LGBTQ students, DeVos wrote: “Every child deserves to attend school in a safe, supportive environment where they can learn, thrive, and grow.”

That sentence is almost identical to language used by Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division under Obama, in a news release announcing the administration’s controversial guidance to schools on how to accommodate transgender students.

No one in their right mind would call it such, but WaPo does, and there’s a reason for that.

See, roughly 30 minutes after the story went live, the aforementioned Sen. Patty Murray, referenced the so-called plagiarism as she read from her clearly prepared remarks.

The questions were delivered from DeVos to the senators who asked them. Those answered would then have had to be leaked to the Washington Post in order to get a story going ahead of the HELP Committee’s confirmation vote.

It was clearly planted in order to try and discredit DeVos ahead of the vote. There is no way Murray threw it in there on the fly, as though she had just read the story. Her staff, or someone’s staff, put those in her remarks and then sent the information out to do it.

But, this isn’t plagiarism. The statements are “similar” to other public statements, and they were not stolen at length, nor did she take credit for the answers. She was filling out a questionnaire from Democrats who were trying to inundate her with paperwork in order to delay her vote.

Every Democrat in the committee has already decided to vote against DeVos. They are just trying to turn public opinion against her because they know they don’t have the numbers to oppose her.