How this election denier went from 'fringe menace' to Trump’s election security head

Donald Trump's "fixation" with his loss in the 2020 election has not abated, according to a Thursday report from the New York Times, with the president now pursuing his false fraud claims with a conspiracy theorist once dismissed as a "fringe menace."

According to the report, Trump has brought on lawyer Kurt Olsen to serve as his director of “election security and integrity," a position that allows him to refer criminal investigations. Olsen is credited with instigating the recent criminal investigation into alleged election fraud in Fulton County, Georgia, which led to a highly publicized raid at an election center where 2020 ballots were seized.

Olsen's place in the second Trump administration, the Times explained, is part of a larger trend in which "some of the most far-out election conspiracists who helped him spread lies about the 2020 election and then tried to overturn it are now inside the government, using the power of the state to keep Mr. Trump’s denialism alive." During Trump's first term, officials in his administration once dismissed him as a "fringe menace."

Trump has rarely wavered from his false assertions that he actually won the 2020 presidential election, and that his "loss" was the result of widespread voting fraud committed by Democrats. These claims have been investigated and litigated thoroughly and repeatedly since then, and each time, no evidence of his claims has surfaced, solidifying the truth of his defeat by Joe Biden.

Now that he has returned to office, Trump's 2020 claims have been one of his longstanding fixations that has returned to the foreground. During an address to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last month, Trump falsely claimed that evidence had been found to prove his election fraud claims, and pledged that criminal prosecutions would be coming soon. Only weeks later, the raid in Fulton County took place.

As the Times laid out, "in a constellation of conspiracists" now making up the ranks of Trump's second administration, "Mr. Olsen stands out."

"Kurt Olsen has a history of abusing his law license to spread lies about our elections,” Christine P. Sun, a senior vice president at the nonprofit States United Democracy Center, told the outlet. “Now, he’s using his role in the administration and the power of the federal government to take actions fueled by those same lies. It’s part of a multipronged approach that threatens state power over our elections.”

When Olsen became involved in Trump's effort to dispute and reverse his loss in late 2020, he became known for "taking on cases that many other Republican attorneys avoided putting their names on." This included a case that made it to the Supreme Court, seeking to have Trump's loss overturned, which was ultimately rejected. Olsen reportedly then began discussing a plan to bring another case via the Justice Department. This idea was quashed by other administration officials, who said the case would lack legal standing, despite Trump claiming Olsen told him it would be a "slam dunk."

"Even after Mr. Trump left office, Mr. Olsen continued to press the false claims about election machines," the Times continued. "He found a like-minded ally in February 2021 when... Mr. Trump introduced him to Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, who has become best known for promoting the falsehood that voting machines are often rigged and have flipped elections. The two worked together for years with a movement of activists and cybersecurity experts around the country to promote conspiracy theories about election machines through lawsuits, media appearances and yearly conferences."

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