The Piedmont Chronicles
~ est. 2010 ~
[State of Georgia]
[Newton County]
After months of research, this publication has reached a point where it is comfortable to publish the following report:
William "Bill" Perugino is a local Newton Co. citizen. He is also the Republican representative to the Newton County Board of Elections. In addition, he is the appointee of John Douglas for the Newton County Library Board of Trustees, as well as the Chairman of the Newton County Republican Party.
Let's take a step back in time. To early 2013. At the time, Perugino had spent the last year or so writing a weekly column for the Covington News, the legal organ of Newton County. Around January that year, his column abruptly stopped.
There was word on the street as to why this happened, but this column isn't about the word on the street. No, this column is strictly about the facts and wanting to ascertain if an appointed government official, governmental-entity trustee, and an officer of a state-sanctioned political party had committed plagiarism.
Here are the facts:
A write-up from The Daily Signal from May 22, 2012:
Compare that to Perugino's article that came out a few days later in the Covington News:
With the exception of the removal of the first word of the article, most of this article appears to be complete copy-and-paste job.
Another example for your consideration:
Here is a column from the New York Times from January of 2013.
Compare that to this column from Perugino that came out just one day later:
Picking up with Perugino's 5th paragraph and comparing it to the other article and one can see that it is completely the same. Word for word, another copy-and-paste job.
And a third example:
Compare Perugino's Covington News column versus this write-up from Heritage.org:
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According to a source who was involved with the Covington News during this time and who wishes to remain anonymous, a copy editor working at the time was the one who discovered this activity. This same copy editor allegedly wrote a column talking about plagiarism very shortly after Perugino's column abruptly ended.
The Chronicles received help on this story from another person who also wishes to remain anonymous who came across these three examples (plus a few others) using a tool that college professors often use to verify if their students are using their own words instead of copying the work of others.
Again, let me stress to the readers that this column did not come quickly nor was it taken lightly. This is big, big stuff - and we so get that - and we wanted to do this the right way. I reached out to Mr. Perugino to ask him about this situation and he responded, "I don't know what you're talking about." The Chronicles had also previously reached out to T. Pat Cavanaugh, who was the Publisher of the Covington News at the time, who said that all he could say was that he would not rehire Perugino at the Covington News.
I will offer no other commentary at this time other than to say this raises many questions about the judgement and character of someone who, as previously mentioned, serves in an official governmental capacity.
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