President Donald Trump has directed top U.S. spy agencies to share sensitive intelligence about the 2020 election with his former campaign lawyer, known for pushing debunked theories of electoral fraud, according to four people with knowledge of the effort.
The intelligence that top U.S. spy agencies are furnishing to Kurt Olsen — now a temporary government employee in the White House — is meant to support a probe he is leading into whether Joe Biden’s 2020 election win was the result of fraud or other electoral irregularities, said the people, who, like others in this article, were granted anonymity for fear of retribution.
It’s unclear whether there are any limits to the types of sensitive materials Olsen has access to. Two of the people familiar with Olsen’s work specified that he has at least reviewed some sensitive compartmented intelligence programs, which are among the most highly classified material stored by U.S. spy agencies. One of the people said he leans on Trump when he needs something — including access to highly classified intelligence reporting — from different spy agencies.
“Every time he hits a roadblock, he just calls POTUS,” said the first person familiar with Olsen’s work.
The decision to provide some of the government’s most sensitive spy material to Olsen is unusual, given that he has no known experience working with the U.S. spy community and only joined the Trump administration as a short-term special government employee in October 2025. Special government employees are supposed to work no more than 130 days during any period of 365 days, suggesting his time at the White House could end soon.
The first person said that Olsen has passed a background check and a polygraph exam. It is not clear how close Olsen is to completing his report on the 2020 elections.
Intelligence analysis is supposed to be nonpartisan, and it appears Olsen’s views on electoral fraud in prior U.S. elections are so deeply held that even some people close to the president question his ability to evaluate the material shared with him.
“This guy has no background” in intelligence, said the second person, a close Trump ally. Olsen “will find some super classified report, say it’s evidence of fraud, but really it’s just completely out of context.”
Olsen did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A CIA spokesperson confirmed in a statement that the agency is cooperating with Olsen. "The President has asked Mr. Olsen to look at intelligence related to the 2020 election and the agency is ensuring that he has the access necessary to do his work.”
The White House did not respond to questions about whether there were any limits on the intelligence that could be shared with Olsen, but said that the president “has the authority to provide access to classified material to individuals as he deems necessary. The entire Trump Administration is working together to ensure the integrity of U.S. elections.”
Olsen rose to prominence by working closely with Trump to undermine the results of the 2020 election under the slogan “Stop the Steal.” He urged several DOJ officials that year to file a complaint to the Supreme Court scrutinizing Trump’s loss, and even called the president multiple times during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. A federal judge later sanctioned Olsen for making “false, misleading and unsupported factual assertions” in support of Republican Kari Lake’s unsuccessful legal challenge to overturn her loss in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial race.
He was also in regular contact with Trump during the 2024 campaign and encouraged him to make legal demands that could be used to challenge the results in battleground states, The New York Times reported.
Olsen’s access to sensitive intelligence is likely to heighten concerns that the Trump administration is looking to spin up evidence for its unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” — and justify exerting greater federal control over U.S. elections ahead of the midterms.
In a podcast interview on Feb. 2 with former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, Trump repeated baseless claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” and urged Republicans to “take over the voting … in at least 15 places.” The comments came just days after FBI agents executed a search warrant at an Atlanta-area elections facility that Trump allies have claimed helped fraudulently tip the state to Biden in 2020.
A third person familiar said that the president views the investigation as something of a test for Olsen and other allies who have long argued they could prove the 2020 election was stolen — if they had access to all available evidence.
“Effectively what he [Trump] said was, ‘this is your chance,’” said the person, who has spoken to the president directly on election security issues. “Now, anything that they want, they can get.”
Olsen appears to be casting a wide net in his search for intelligence related to the 2020 elections. Since joining the Trump administration, Olsen has traveled multiple times to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA and National Security Agency headquarters, according to two of the people familiar with his work.
One of those two people familiar with his work added that the Justice Department and FBI are also in contact with Olsen, and that Olsen is close to FBI Deputy Director Andrew Bailey and NSA Deputy Director Tim Kosiba. Olsen vouched for Kosiba before he was selected for the role in January, POLITICO previously reported.
Kosiba did not respond to a request for comment. Bailey could not be reached for comment through the FBI.
The FBI and DOJ did not respond to a request for comment about whether they are providing any information to Olsen. The National Security Agency referred POLITICO to the ODNI.
Olivia Coleman, a spokesperson for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, said only that “every individual who is granted access to classified information goes through an extensive background investigation, including record checks and personal interviews, with a trained investigator to ensure that the individual is trustworthy and does not pose a threat to national security.”
Intelligence reporting on threats to U.S. elections often contains extremely sensitive information — not only on what U.S. spy agencies know, but also indications of how they obtained that information. This could include undisclosed technical capabilities or the identity of informants who spent years cultivating access to foreign governments.
Ahead of the 2016 election, a CIA spy close to Russian President Vladimir Putin provided critical intelligence on the Kremlin’s efforts to meddle in that year’s vote in support of Trump. The agency later extracted the person from Russia and brought them to the U.S. over concerns that their life was in danger.
In a statement to POLITICO, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said that if Olsen has broad access to our nation’s most sensitive intelligence, it reflects “yet another example of Director Gabbard being willing to put at risk some of our most sensitive sources and methods just to curry political favor with the president.”
“Handing the keys to our intelligence agencies to an election denier in pursuit of Donald Trump’s long-disproven conspiracy theories is a dangerous misuse of government power that threatens national security,” said Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Olsen has been told that if he wants to release or declassify any elements of his report, it will have to be cleared with the intelligence community, according to the first person familiar with Olsen’s work. Trump has the authority to declassify intelligence information, and will have the last say on how much of the report becomes public.
Olsen’s probe into the 2020 election comes as Democrats express growing concern about another reported investigation into possible fraud in that year’s vote led by Gabbard.
Coleman confirmed Thursday that investigators working for Gabbard obtained voting machines in Puerto Rico last spring to check them for security vulnerabilities. The effort was first reported by Reuters.
It came just days after Gabbard was photographed on site as the FBI executed a search warrant at an Atlanta-area elections facility that is at the center of Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims. Gabbard later told top Democrats that Trump had requested her to be there, and acknowledged facilitating a call the day after the raid between Trump and some of the FBI personnel who headed the operation.
Trump later said he didn’t know why Gabbard was there, later claiming she went at Attorney General Pam Bondi’s insistence.
The sequence of events alarmed Democrats, former intelligence officials, and state election officials because the DNI is not typically involved in domestic law enforcement, and is traditionally focused on foreign spy matters. The Justice Department is also supposed to remain free of political interference from the president. Coleman has said election security issues are well within the DNI’s statutory authorities.
It is unclear if Gabbard’s work and Olsen’s are connected.
from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/Fi8NlsM
https://ift.tt/acWtKmV
0 Comments