In their pursuit of assorted election conspiracy theories, Donald Trump and his team have occasionally used outside contractors to lend a hand. After the president lost in 2020, for example, he hired the Berkeley Research Group to uncover evidence of widespread voter fraud and election irregularities. This did not go well because there was no such evidence to find.
Trump then he hired Simpatico Software Systems, which also failed to turn his fantasies into reality for the same reason.
This week, a third such example is coming into focus, though the reactions to this contractor’s findings have been a little different.
While Kurt Olsen’s name is probably unfamiliar to most Americans, he’s in a position the public ought to care about. The former Trump campaign lawyer and prominent election denier was brought onto the president’s team last year and given the title of “Director of Election Security and Integrity,” charged with helping to prove Trump’s discredited conspiracy theories about his 2020 defeat. Politico reported in February that the president has even directed top U.S. spy agencies to “share sensitive intelligence” with Olsen to help in his endeavors.
Reuters reported this week that Olsen and his colleagues set out to prove discredited conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems machines, which he apparently suspected had been infected with some kind of malicious Venezuelan code. Trump administration officials even scrutinized Dominion machines in Puerto Rico, looking for evidence that never emerged.
Team Trump even tasked a cybersecurity contractor to help, but it, too, couldn’t uncover evidence that didn’t exist. Left with little choice, Olsen moved on.
No, I’m just kidding. Olsen seems to have decided instead to incorporate the cybersecurity contractor into his broader conspiracy theory. From the Reuters article:
Confronted with the results, Olsen turned on the contractor, Virginia-based Mojave Research Inc. in a September message to Trump, the three sources said. Infuriated, Olsen accused the firm of blocking his work, serving the ‘deep state’ and secretly taking money from billionaire George Soros, a Democratic donor and frequent right-wing target, they said.
Mojave had been brought on by Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, to search for vulnerabilities in the machines Puerto Rico used during its 2024 gubernatorial elections.
According to the Reuters report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, the president “took Olsen’s deep-state allegations about Mojave seriously,” which should probably come as a surprise to no one.
The company said in a statement that Olsen’s Soros theory is “patently absurd and ridiculous,” and the article added that Mojave “opened its books to show it took no money from Soros.”
If the reporting is accurate, it offers a peek into an extraordinary worldview: When the evidence shows a conspiracy theory is wrong, then the evidence, by definition, must also be wrong — because the conspiracy theory must be right.
It also serves as a timely reminder that while Trump continues to peddle absurdities about his loss from nearly six years ago (as recently as Thursday, he again said “they” are finding proof that the 2020 election was “totally rigged”), White House officials are doing a lot more than just saying preposterous things. They also doing preposterous things.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
The post Team Trump turns on contractor after it failed to bolster election conspiracy theory appeared first on MS NOW.
