Cardi B might not have been the biggest sleezebag to campaign with Joe Biden after all. Netflix’s “Cheer” star and Biden supporter Jerry Harris has reportedly been charged with producing child pornography.
Harris was arrested Thursday, days after the FBI confirmed he was under investigation for allegedly soliciting sex and photos from twin boys in Texas, according to a report published by the Chicago Tribune.
FBI agents executed a search warrant at Harris’ home on Monday afternoon. Law enforcement reportedly searched his Naperville, Illinois, residence in connection to the probe. The 21-year-old Harris has not been criminally charged and has not issued a statement. “The FBI is conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity in the area,” an FBI special agent told USA Today in a statement.
A representative for Harris denied the allegations against the professional cheerleader Monday.
“We categorically dispute the claims made against Jerry Harris, which are alleged to have occurred when he was a teenager,” a spokesperson for Harris told ABC News after the news broke. “We are confident that when the investigation is completed the true facts will be revealed.”
USA Today spoke to the boys, who described a pattern of harassment, both online and at cheer competitions, that started when they were 13 and Harris was 19, as previously reported by 100% FED Up. It continued for more than a year. “Harris is accused of asking one of the brothers to have sex with him in 2019 at two Varsity cheerleading competitions,” the newspaper reported.
The family provided USA TODAY with screenshots from five text and social media conversations between the boys and accounts they say belong to Harris. Several of the screenshots include messages explicitly requesting nude photos or sex. In one conversation on Snapchat, an account with the name “.jerry harris” responded to a photo of Charlie stretching his leg above his head.
“Do it naked and take a video and show me,” Harris replied privately, according to a screenshot provided to USA TODAY.
Cheer is a documentary series that chronicles Navarro College cheerleaders’ plight to win a U.S. national championship and has scored six Emmy nominations since its release in January. In June, Harris made a cameo featuring now-Democrat presidential nominee Biden in a video in which he asked viewers to vote for Biden.
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Last month, TIME magazine reported on how the Biden team recruited Harris and other Hollywood figures:
Biden’s digital team knows the former VP’s online following doesn’t begin to compete with Trump’s. So its strategy has revolved partly around leveraging the popularity of others. “Where are people already talking about this? Where are the people who are already fired up about this?” says Biden senior adviser Caitlin Mitchell, 34, who is leading much of the digital strategy. Biden’s team has organized Instagram Live sessions with influencers including TV personality Keke Palmer and Jerry Harris from the Netflix series Cheer. (The idea of working with Harris earned the support of Biden’s college-age granddaughter Finnegan, who has the candidate’s ear on digital matters.)
