John Harris is an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of North Carolina, and testified yesterday that he first raised concerns about ballot collection on the night of the 2016 Republican primary. Via the Raleigh News & Observer:

RALEIGH --Contradicting his father’s previous denials, the son of Republican Mark Harris testified Wednesday that he told the candidate multiple times that he had concerns about the political operative hired to run an absentee ballot campaign in Bladen County.

The testimony from John Harris rebutted suggestions by Harris and his campaign that they’d seen no red flags about McCrae Dowless, who is now at the center of allegations into voting irregularities in the 9th Congressional District.

John Harris’ dramatic testimony came on the third day of a hearing by North Carolina’s State Board of Elections that could decide the nation’s last unresolved congressional race and has drawn national attention — and it left his father in tears.

“I love my dad and I love my mom,” John Harris said as his father cried. “I certainly have no vendetta against them, no family scores to settle, OK? I think they made mistakes in this process, and they certainly did things differently than I would have done them.”

And the Charlotte Observer reports:

Yates said he doesn’t conduct criminal background checks on vendors or contractors with the campaign. He did a cursory Google search on Dowless with his name misspelled and also searched on a court records website. Among the charges he saw were assault on a female.

Yates said he considered that charge a misdemeanor and in line with information he had received about Dowless. Yates said others, including former judge Marion Warren and elected officials in Bladen County, had vouched for Dowless.

Geeze. Were they all using this guy to steal elections?

Mark Harris has not been sworn in because the state election board refused to certify his election, citing the many irregularities.