BTW -- -the link has a live feed video available of the hearing. I am listening to the session in the background. https://www.wral.com/the-latest-mark-harris-expected-to-testify-in-9th-district-hearing/18200098/
Allow me to provide some further context. Paying campaign operatives to obtain absentee ballot requests is legal. Paying campaign operatives to collect and witness absentee ballots is illegal. Only close family members can handle or witness absentee ballots. Most of the paid Democratic campaign operatives collected and witnessed 30 to 100 ballots each (as did the Republican operatives). It should be obvious that these all are not close family members. Overall the paid Democratic campaign operatives collected/witnessed approx. 600 absentee ballots. The paid Republican campaign operatives collected/witnessed approx. 400 absentee ballots. The election was won by approx. 900 votes.
Testimony confirmed that paid Democratic operatives Lola Wooten (who signed at least 95 counted absentee ballots) and Deborah Monroe (who signed at least 56 counted absentee ballots) have received subpoenas to appear at the State Board of Elections hearing.
Questions are being asked why Democratic operative Sandra Guions, who signed at least 69 absentee ballots in Bladen County, has not been subpoenaed to appear. She was paid $1200 for her "get out the vote work" over a two week period. Confirmed that the Bladen County Improvement Association paid both Lola Wooten and Deborah Moore around $1,000 in the month before the 2018 election for get-out-the-vote efforts, according to the PAC’s fourth-quarter campaign finance report.
First some background - the Wake County DAs office is responsible for the investigations and subpoenas involving the 9th Congressional District race. All the evidence and information gathered for the election board hearing for the most part were gathered by the Wake County DAs office. In North Carolina the Wake County DA office (located in Raleigh) is responsible for any investigations anywhere in the state regarding election fraud that are directed to be undertaken by the State Election Board. The Wake County DAs office (currently under DA Lorrin Freeman) has the reputation as being one of the best and most competent offices in the state. The evidence and information gathered for the State Election Board hearing appears to be a solid affirmation of the Wake County DA's office competence. Wake DA: No immunity deals for 9th District hearings https://www.wral.com/wake-da-no-immunity-deals-for-9th-district-hearings/18202435/ None of the witnesses in this week's 9th Congressional District hearings has immunity deals in a parallel criminal investigation, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said Tuesday. That includes Lisa Britt, who admitted to multiple felonies under oath during her testimony Monday to the State Board of Elections. She may eventually face charges, but Freeman said people "who accept responsibility early on and cooperate generally fare better over the long haul." Britt testified that she collected dozens of absentee ballots, forged her mother's signature with her permission and backdated witnessing signatures on absentee ballots. All carry potential charges, and Britt testified to them voluntarily, without an attorney in the room for her. "I'm sure, like any cooperating person ... there is some hope at the end that her cooperation will be taken into consideration," Freeman said. "I don't think you can excuse criminal behavior," she added. Though dozens of witnesses were subpoenaed in the elections board's hearings, each who has testified has been released from that subpoena when taking the stand. They're told their testimony is under oath but voluntary, and that they may leave at any time. That's because state law (General Statutes 163A-1391) gives blanket immunity for crimes a person admits if they are compelled to testify. The protection is, State Board of Elections Chairman Robert Cordle said, stronger in some ways than the Fifth Amendment. The concept is similar, but witnesses don't have to invoke the amendment. McCrae Dowless, the central figure in an alleged ballot scheme in and around Bladen County, refused to testify voluntarily before the board Monday. His attorney said he would testify if compelled, but the state board declined. Freeman said her office had agents in Bladen County on Tuesday. She said her inquiry has largely focused on the 2016 general election, which saw similar, if less widespread, allegations of absentee ballot fraud, and the 2018 primary. Freeman said she expects the State Board of Elections will eventually forward its findings from the 2018 general election to her. Board staff interviewed more than 170 people in that inquiry, Executive Director Kim Strach said Monday, and is laying out its case on absentee ballot fraud to the board in public hearings this week. The board may order a new election as a result, but any criminal prosecution would be handled by state prosecutors or by the U.S. Attorney's Office, which has not said whether it's actively investigating election irregularities in Bladen and Robeson counties. Freeman's office is handling the Bladen County investigation to avoid potential conflicts of interest from the local district attorney. She said she envisions "a phased approach" of taking findings before a grand jury. "Clearly, I anticipate there will be people who, in the end, will face criminal prosecution," she said.
First for enlightening information today on why the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District was told to butt out of any investigation of the 9th District Election until the State Election Board investigation was completed. John Harris, an assistant U.S. attorney, was called as the 11th witness this afternoon. He is the son of Mark Harris (the candidate) and works for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District. John Harris opened his statement saying none of his comments represent U.S. Department of Justice positions and that he knows nothing about the federal investigation of voting irregularities in the 9th Congressional District. A summary of John Harris' testimony is below... Mark Harris' son on Bladen absentee ballot operation: I thought it was illegal, and I was right https://www.wral.com/mark-harris-so...ught-it-was-illegal-and-i-was-right/18205754/ Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris' son testified Wednesday that he warned his parents not to hire the man whose absentee ballot operation has laid his father's campaign low, contradicting what Harris himself has told reporters. In calls and emails, John Harris sounded alarms about Bladen County political operative McCrae Dowless, pointing to shady past results and predicting the controversy that has dogged his father since soon after the November election. "I thought what he was doing was illegal," John Harris told the State Board of Elections as his mother and father looked on Wednesday. "And I was right." John Harris said he had no vendetta, no score to settle with his testimony. He said he loves his parents. He said his father is an honest man who likely believed Dowless when he promised he wasn't illegally collecting absentee ballots to produce lopsided results in the county's mail-in vote. But Mark Harris has publicly denied that he was ever warned that Dowless' methods looked like fraud. "The only thing that people would say was that it was unusual," the former pastor told Charlotte radio station WFAE earlier this year. John Harris said he cut off most communication with his parents as stories about the controversy began in early December, at least partly because he's an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, the office with jurisdiction over ballot fraud in federal elections in this part of the state. He visited his parents at Christmas, he said, and more recently while his father was in the hospital. But John Harris said he didn't tell his parents he'd been subpoenaed to appear at hearings that may lead to a do-over election in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District. He also provided emails to state investigators that they didn't get from the his father's campaign despite a subpoena for documents – something the campaign may have to answer for before this saga ends. Mark Harris fought tears as his son closed his testimony Wednesday. He's expected to take the stand himself Thursday, the fourth day of State Board of Elections hearings on the results of the 9th District race, the last uncalled congressional contest in the country. Mark Harris has a 905-vote lead, enough to hold even if the board throws out questioned absentee ballots, but that may not matter if the bipartisan board decides the election is too tainted to stand. Mark Harris met with Dowless in April 2017 to talk about the 2018 campaign, he has said. In emails soon after, John Harris repeatedly warned his father that Dowless' promises were too good to be true. He quoted state law: It's a felony to collect other people's ballots. Dowless had worked for Todd Johnson, now a Republican state senator, in 2016, when Johnson ran in the the 9th District primary against Mark Harris and then-Congressman Robert Pittenger. Despite a third-place finish overall, Johnson crushed the other two candidates in the Bladen County mail-in count: 221 to 4 to 1. The result mattered less because Johnson didn't win, John Harris said in the April email. But if it had been Pittenger, he wrote, "I would have strongly advocated going to the press with the analysis of the numbers ... as well as investigated some of the voters personally to decide whether to refer the case to the DA." "So I think you should be prepared for the same," he wrote. In addition to the state inquiry, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman's office is running a criminal investigation. Dowless has denied any wrongdoing, but he has refused to speak with state investigators, and his lieutenants have said they collected ballots at his direction. John Harris testified that the 2016 absentee results in Bladen County were so strange he initially suspected a counting error. The county produced some 22 percent of the total mail-in vote for the district, but just 2 percent of the Election Day and in-person early votes, he emailed his parents the night of that election. "This smacks of something gone awry," he said in the email, one of several put into evidence at Wednesday's hearing. John Harris said he also saw an oddly high number of black voters in Bladen County casting mail-in ballots in a GOP primary. It seemed to him, based on the dates absentee ballots were mailed, that someone was stockpiling them and mailing them in batches. Mark Harris has told reporters that he shared concerns about the 2016 Bladen County results with one of his attorneys. John Harris said that was likely Josh Howard, who oversaw the campaign's recount request after a narrow loss to Pittenger. Howard is a former chairman of the State Board of Elections. Mark Harris has also said his attorney advised against pushing the issue and that he saw hiring Dowless himself as a potential boost for his 2018 run. Dowless would be paid more than $100,000 by the campaign without producing records to document his absentee ballot work, Harris campaign consultant Andy Yates testified this week. John Harris said the decision to pay Dowless through Yates' firm, Charlotte-based Red Dome Group, seemed to flow from concerns he raised with Yates. An attorney for the State Board of Elections asked Yates about that conversation during his own testimony Wednesday. "I do not recall ever having a conversation with him about that," Yates said. "If that conversation occurred, I do not recall it." Mark Harris declined to answer questions as he left the hearing Wednesday. One of his attorneys, David Freedman, promised answers in his client's testimony Thursday. He said the legal team had John Harris' emails with them Wednesday and was prepared to share them with the state board. Freedman said he only learned John Harris would testify "recently." John Harris testified that he found the emails in December, as the controversy heated up. He said he reached out to another of his father's attorneys to see whether the campaign considered them protected by attorney-client privilege. He said he eventually heard from Freedman that the campaign planned to release them to the state board. John Harris said he then called the board's general counsel to say the emails would be produced and to make himself available for an interview. When the interview came, John Harris said he brought copies of the emails with him. He said he didn't know until Wednesday that the campaign hadn't produced them. In addition to the June 2016 email questioning absentee results and the April 2017 email warning against hiring Dowless, John Harris produced an email chain with his father from November 2016, when then-Gov. Pat McCrory was fighting his loss to current Gov. Roy Cooper. One of the reasons: ballot fraud accusations in Bladen County. Those concerns would eventually be dismissed by the state board and referred to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District after it came out that some of the complaints Dowless, as well as McCrory's legal team, had pushed against a local PAC called the Bladen County Improvement Association actually involved people working with Dowless. The McCrory campaign sent out an email blast around this time, subject line: "Democrat Voting Fraud Scheme Uncovered." John Harris forwarded it to his father with a note: "Preaching to the choir." In his reply, Mark Harris noted that it was Dowless making the claim, "the same guy that Johnson paid to run the 'absentee ballot program' for him!" "Guess he didn't like the Dems cutting into his business," Mark Harris wrote.
The minute-by-minute summary of John Harris' testimony today can be found here... https://www.wral.com/9th-district-c...-suspicious-absentee-ballot-tactics/18200098/
I never said this was a bunch of Democrats on a witch hunt. I stated that the Democrats did the EXACT SAME THING in this election except that the paid Democratic operatives collected 600 ballots and the Republican operative only 400. The five members of the State Election Board are clearly showing their partisan bias in the questioning. Three are Democrats and two are Republicans. The chairman is a Democrat. Yesterday the Chairman tried to stop a witness (the Republican party lawyer) from reading the Democratic candidate and PAC filings in the session. The filings show (obviously) that the Democrats paid their operatives for "get out the vote" absentee ballot operations. The Democratic operatives collected 5 to 15 ballots per day on average during periods they were being paid. The chairman tried to object to the testimony calling it a smear - but it had to continue and be placed on the record because reading the exact records your own party submitted word-for-word can hardly be called a smear. This, of course, led to further explosive questioning later in the day on why only two of these Democratic operatives were subpoenaed -- as well as a situation where the Democrats were forced to admit in the session that the filings were accurate and then had to effectively submit the sections regarding payments in as evidence themselves.
I see. And by exact same thing, you’re claiming democrats fraudulently took absentee ballots from voters and destroyed them, because that’s what all of this is about. Taking the right to vote away from people.