North Carolina Republican vote fraudster (and evangelical "Christian" minister) Mark Harris abruptly changed course at yesterday's election board hearing and called for a new election in the state's 9th Congressional district, a request the bipartisan board was all too happy to declare after months of legal wrangling by Harris and the state's Republican Party to avoid a new election. So why did Harris suddenly abandon his previous stance against a new election, particularly amid overwhelming evidence of widespread absentee ballot fraud by his campaign? It seems, while Minister Mark was happy telling lies, his son (a federal prosecutor) wasn't:
The board’s decision capped a dramatic week that included testimony from Harris’s son, John Harris, a federal prosecutor, who said Wednesday that he warned his father in phone calls and emails that he believed [Leslie] Dowless had broken the law in a previous election and should not be hired for the 2018 campaign.
Mark Harris hired Dowless anyway.
In one email exchange displayed during John Harris’s testimony, father and son discussed whether to hire Dowless. The younger Harris wrote: “Good test is if you’re comfortable with the full process he uses being broadcast on the news.”
In his testimony Thursday, the elder Harris maintained as he had in interviews with reporters that he was unaware of red flags about the operative’s alleged tactics — notwithstanding what his son told him in spring 2017. [snip]
[Josh] Lawson, the board counsel, asked Harris if he had told anyone this week that he did not expect his email exchanges with John Harris to be made public in the hearing. Harris said four times that he did not recall.
After the fourth time, Harris’s lawyer, Freedman, abruptly stood up and asked to speak to the five-member board in private.
When the board reconvened, Harris took the stand again and explained that he had been mistaken about that recollection — and had in fact told his younger son, Matthew, in the phone conversation Tuesday evening, that he did not expect those emails to surface the next day.
Harris said the episode made him realize that he was not prepared for the “rigors” of the evidentiary hearing. He called for a new election, then promptly excused himself from the proceeding and walked out. (our emphasis)To Harris, the "rigors" of the evidentiary hearing equal "telling the truth." He should walk directly into jail. (No one's betting Harris will be on the ballot in the re- do.)
North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper now has two Congressional elections to schedule: the re- do in the 9th, and one in the 3rd District to fill the seat of Republican Walter Jones who recently passed away.
(Photo: Republican con men Trump and Harris)
