It's easy to admit guilt when caught red-handed, so I don't give him any credit for that.
He copy-pasted from wikipedia, utterly indefensible. He didn't copy a quote from wikipedia, but entire paragraphs. Even WITH attribution that's totally unacceptable. What he calls "rewriting" is exactly the same thing kids do in highschool when cheating during exams, and when copying each other's papers. The teacher isn't fooled by this transparent cheating. And neither am I.
You didn't find his explanation at all plausible, that the sections that were copied were attributed and fomatted to indicate as much, before a last-minute reformat? Why?
He copy-pasted from wikipedia, utterly indefensible. He didn't copy a quote from wikipedia, but entire paragraphs. Even WITH attribution that's totally unacceptable. What he calls "rewriting" is exactly the same thing kids do in highschool when cheating during exams, and when copying each other's papers. The teacher isn't fooled by this transparent cheating. And neither am I.