A transgender youth advocate and doctor backing opponents of President Donald Trump’s executive order protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation may have plagiarized portions of his expert report, leaders of the Arizona state legislature warned the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Dr. Daniel Shumer, who directs the Child and Adolescent Gender Services Clinic at the University of Michigan’s children’s hospital, admitted that he committed plagiarism by his university’s standards as an expert witness in a case challenging Arizona’s Save Women’s Sports Act, state legislature leaders told Attorney General Pam Bondi in a March 11 letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Because Dr. Shumer has served as an expert witness under the previous administration and is currently an expert witness against the United States, we write to bring important legal and ethical issues to your attention,” Arizona State Senate President Warren Peterson and Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives Steve Montenegro wrote.
Shumer’s testimony in two cases opposing Trump’s order contain “identical or virtually identical language” to the questioned sections of his testimony in the Arizona case, the letter to Bondi states.
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AZ Legislature Leaders Letter to Pam Bondi by Katelynn Richardson
Arizona legislature leaders filed a motion March 5 to exclude Shumer’s testimony from their case due to “numerous instances in his expert report containing identical or virtually identical language to other expert witnesses, without attribution.” Shumer has received nearly $150,000 over the past four or five years to supply expert testimony against state bans on child sex change procedures, the motion claims.
Though Shumer initially denied he plagiarized, he later “admitted that it was a mistake not to cite the other experts,” according to the motion.
Shumer previously worked with Biden’s DOJ to serve as an expert witness in the case opposing Alabama’s ban on child sex changes, and he claimed his contract with the government did not end until early February, the letter to Bondi notes.
“We do not know the exact dates when the Department of Justice terminated Dr. Shumer and the State of Washington retained Dr. Shumer,” the letter continues. “However, the timeline raises questions about whether Dr. Shumer began work against the United States while he still was serving as a witness for the United States.”
“The Department of Justice may want to evaluate whether Dr. Shumer adhered to his retention agreement and any other obligations that applied to him while he was a witness for the United States,” it states.
The Arizona legislature leaders also suggested the DOJ should look into whether Shumer’s testimony “raises perjury issues.”
“He claimed that the words in the report were his,” they wrote. “He testified that he took sources identified in his report and distilled them into his own words.”
Trump signed an executive order Jan. 28 restricting federal funding from going towards the “so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another.” Two judges have since blocked the Trump administration from withholding funds from hospitals that perform child sex change procedures.
Shumer did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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