The website published fabricated articles about things like thousands of ballots pre-marked to vote for Hillary Clinton in an Ohio warehouse, complete with photos stolen from other sources. Harris purchased the website domain for $5 and it brought in up to $1,000 an hour — at least $22,000 altogether — during the election year, the Times reported.

The website was no longer online as of Wednesday afternoon.

In an interview through a series of text messages, Harris confirmed Wednesday that he ran the site for 11 months until November 2016, when the election concluded.

During that time, he stayed at Vogt’s home in Brunswick, which both men listed as their address on Federal Election Commission reports. Vogt said Wednesday night that he rented his basement to Harris.

Harris, whose full legal name is Michael Cameron Harris, wrote in a text message that he left the house when he was working on the site.

“I did the work on my own time and with my personal computer,” Harris texted.

“... The hour a week I worked on the site was primarily spent at a local Starbucks,” he responded when pressed about whether work was done at the house.

“My motivation was financially-based. I undertook the personal risk by doing so. Delegate Vogt was not involved in any way, and I never put him in a position to be involved,” Harris texted.

During the time ChristianTimesNewspaper.com was operating, the General Assembly session met for the 2016 session and Harris worked for a time as Vogt’s campaign manager in a failed bid for the Republican nomination to the 6th District U.S. House seat.

Harris was fired from Vogt’s legislative office around 4 p.m. Wednesday, the delegate said.

“I do not support any dishonesty in any way, shape or form,” Vogt said when reached by phone Wednesday afternoon. He said he took away Harris’ badge and keys to the office earlier in the day.

“I’ve always thought Cameron was an intelligent young man that had a good future. I think this was a bad decision on his part,” Vogt said. “I hope he’ll recover from it, but I can’t support dishonesty in any way.”

Harris responded to a message left on his cellphone Wednesday through text message, offering a statement, and answering seven questions from a reporter before posting a longer statement on Twitter.

Harris was not in the Annapolis office at 4:51 p.m. He hadn’t come to work on Wednesday, someone in the shared office told a reporter.

Earlier on Wednesday, Harris sat down for a Facebook Live interview with the reporter who wrote the New York Times story, Scott Shane.

Though Harris voted for Donald Trump in the general election, he said in the interview with Shane that his motivation for starting the website was purely financial, describing how he frequently looked for valuable expired domain names to resell for a profit. When Harris bought ChristianTimesNewspaper.com, he didn’t have a plan for it, but the opportunity presented itself with the proliferation of “fake news” sites over the past year.

“Frankly, the writers of the stories didn’t do a good job of speaking to their intended audience,” Harris told Shane.

“... I think I just understood ... how to write stories that people would click on and that people would share,” Harris continued.

With a link to his story, Shane wrote in a tweet: “My impression after 3 interviews with Harris: He doesn’t fully grasp how pernicious it is to democracy and public discourse to make stuff up.”

Harris recently graduated from Davidson College, where he majored in political science and economics. In addition to working for Vogt’s campaign and in his legislative office, Harris also previously worked as field operations coordinator and research director for former County Commissioner Blaine Young during his bid for county executive. He told The New York Times he now works in political consulting.

Harris is listed as the domain owner of a website for Chesapeake Strategy Partners, a political consulting firm. The domain was registered on Dec. 1, 2016, and lists several members of the General Assembly as clients, including the U.S. Senate campaign launched by Delegate Kathy Szeliga, the House minority whip, earlier this year.

Reached by phone on Wednesday evening, Szeliga said she never worked with Harris.

A page on the Chesapeake Strategy Partners website called “Who we Are” says the website is under construction and to contact cam@chesapeakestrategy.com.

Harris released a lengthy statement on Twitter.

“I apologize to those disappointed by my actions, and my wish is that I will be allowed to contribute my informed experience to a larger dialogue about how Americans approach the media, tough issues, and the manner in which we, collectively, will inform our decisions going forward,” he wrote, in part.

Harris was, for a time, the manager of Vogt’s congressional campaign.

In December 2015, Harris sent Vogt’s campaign mailing list an email stating that the delegate and then-candidate was filing a bill in Annapolis that would “revoke the tax-exempt status of mosques and organizations that are directly linked to the spread and support of a radicalized notion of Islam.”

Vogt said the email was sent while he was on vacation and that he did not approve the message before it was sent; he later introduced a broader version of the bill that would have applied to any tax-exempt or nonprofit organization with “known ties to terrorism.”

Also during the 6th District race, Vogt’s campaign opened a website — http://delaneyforgovernor2018.com — that targeted U.S. Rep John Delaney, who was ultimately re-elected to his post.