Last year government watchdog group Colorado Ethics Watch asked the state’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel to investigate charges that Colorado-licensed attorney and former Congressman Scott McInnis violated professional ethics when he reportedly plagiarized articles he was contracted to write for the Hasan Family Foundation. The plagiarism charges tanked McInnis’s 2010 campaign for governor, but the Regulation Counsel found McInnis not guilty of either plagiarizing or misrepresenting his work to the foundation .
“„“Mr. Fischer alone chose to import large sections of text previously written by the Honorable Justice Gregory Hobbs into one of the articles drafted for Mr. McInnis, without credit citation,” states the results of the investigation.
“„Fischer apparently argued that the use was not plagiarism because he believes the article is part of the “public domain,” according to the investigation, compiled from interviews with Fischer.
“„Fischer had never disclosed to McInnis that he had taken Hobbs’ work, according to the report.
“„While the Hasan Foundation had originally stated in a news release that McInnis had never disclosed to them the use of Fischer as a research assistant, the investigation found that in fact McInnis had disclosed that information to the foundation.
“„“For all these reasons, there is no clear and convincing evidence Mr. McInnis knowingly engaged in dishonest conduct by either: (1) plagiarizing Justice Hobbs’ work, or (2) reporting to the Foundation that the articles were his original work,” states the report.
“„The story was first reported and broken by the Denver Post, which then led a large editorial campaign against McInnis, calling for the former Congressman to back out of the primary given the allegations.
“„But Regulation Counsel John S. Gleason says the Denver Post reported erroneous facts.
“„“While both Mr. Fischer and [Hasan Family Foundation Chairwoman Seeme] Hasan provided contradictory accounts to the press at the time this issue was raised by the Denver Post, a more thorough review of their archived materials demonstrates that both had forgotten several specific communications with Mr. McInnis that had occurred several years before,” states Gleason.
“„McInnis supporters are now calling for an ethics examination into the reporting of the Denver Post.