Ha! The expert brought on by the New York Times to launder away Kamala Harris’ plagiarism scandal has recanted.

Quick recap: Chris Rufo, the Sherlock Holmes of plagiarism among America’s elite, revealed recently that an Austrian researcher had detected massive instances of direct, verbatim copying in Harris’ (co-authored) book “Tough on Crime.”

In some cases from Wikipedia — as though Harris and her ghostwriter were panicked middle-school students up late the night before a paper’s due. 

Textbook plagiarism, clear as day. 

The Times, naturally, leaped to Harris’ defense — headlining its triple-bylined article “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages From Harris Book” and tapping plagiarism specialist Joanthan Bailey to say that it was not such a big deal.

Funny how the Gray Lady mostly does journalism as in-kind campaign contributions these days — it treated Sen. Rand Paul vastly more harshly over the same offense. 

The reporters also clumsily faked Bailey out by seemingly smokescreening just how many plagiarized bits Harris’ book held.

Later, though, Bailey saw the full dossier, and quickly announced his initial call was way off. 

Though he still won’t come out and say the obvious — the Harris and her ghostwriter are thieves. 

And don’t expect any meaningful adjustments or retractions from the Times. 

Look, this isn’t hard

Plagiarism is theft. 

It’s wrong when students or ghostwriters or libertarian senators or prominent Democrats or Jew-hating Harvard University presidents or anyone else does it. 

And the Times knows that; remember the paper had no trouble rightly slamming someone whose politics it disliked over such theft. 

That the paper of record felt compelled to take this path in its desperate effort to elect Harris is utterly shameful. 

Or it would be if the editors and reporters there had any shame left.