2026-03-08T09:00:33.891Z / CNN
库尔特·奥尔森（Kurt Olsen）曾因坚信佐治亚州富尔顿县及其他地区选举官员处理总统计票工作存在“问题”，成为唐纳德·特朗普总统最离谱的2020年选举反转计划中的关键人物。
五年后的今天，他重返熟悉的战场——特朗普的耳旁，目光聚焦富尔顿县。这位曾将追查选民欺诈描述为“拯救国家”的人，如今拥有了直通总统的渠道，影响力远超以往。
在特朗普卸任期间，奥尔森曾与多位最著名的2020年选举否认者合作。2025年10月，总统任命他为白宫选举安全与完整性主任。凭借新职位，奥尔森起草了一份刑事举报信提交给司法部，正是这一举报直接导致联邦调查局（FBI）在今年1月对富尔顿县2020年选票进行了史无前例的搜查。
奥尔森通过其职位获得接触特朗普的机会，并可直接致电总统，熟悉白宫内部审议情况的消息人士向CNN透露。尽管白宫正推动一项更广泛的“选举完整性”计划以应对未来选举，但消息人士称，奥尔森的工作重心主要在另一条轨道上——重新审视特朗普仍虚假声称被窃取的2020年选举。此外，奥尔森的2020年相关行动还与国家情报总监图尔西·加巴德（Tulsi Gabbard）的行动有所重叠，加巴德出现在富尔顿县FBI搜查现场，引发了关于其参与度的诸多疑问。
“他有点自成一派。”一位白宫官员向CNN表示。
奥尔森未回应CNN的置评请求。
富尔顿县的搜查行动令州选举官员忧心忡忡，他们担心在特朗普呼吁“将选举国家化”并计划发布新的投票相关行政命令之际，联邦政府会对中期选举采取何种行动。
“我已深入研究了本主题中尚未提出或验证的法律论点，并将在不久的将来提出无可辩驳的证据。无论国会是否批准，中期选举都将实施选民身份证制度！”特朗普上月在Truth Social上发文称。
联邦政府还在施压各州移交选民名册，甚至促使一些共和党州官员表示反对。
富尔顿县的搜查凸显了本届政府缺乏法律约束。与特朗普第一任期时阻碍联邦政府介入总统最公然选举反转策略的资深律师们不同，如今这些阻碍者已不复存在。
“他象征着特朗普1.0与特朗普2.0时代的权力交接变化。”斯蒂芬·里彻（Stephen Richer）表示，他曾是2021至2025年亚利桑那州马里科帕县的共和党顶级选举官员。“通常像他这样的人在第一任期不会得到任何重视。”
里彻曾是奥尔森代表亚利桑那州共和党州长候选人卡丽·雷克（Kari Lake）提起的2022年选举欺诈案的被告之一。他称奥尔森的行动催生了选举管理领域此前“不可想象”的做法——联邦政府搜查选票。（里彻后来就雷克关于他“破坏选举”的虚假指控提起诽谤诉讼，该案于2024年和解。）
尽管加巴德领导情报界，但并未参与国内执法事务，她出现在富尔顿县搜查现场进一步引发对特朗普政府计划的怀疑。（她的办公室称，她正领导“与选举安全相关的反情报事务”。）
“图尔西·加巴德通过库尔特·奥尔森，会毫无事实依据地声称有证据表明外国情报机构已渗透并操纵了2020年的计票软件，因此各州应遵循关于选民身份证和邮寄投票的行政命令。”一位熟悉调查内部讨论的律师预测。
据《ProPublica》报道，上月奥尔森与另外五名特朗普政府官员一同参加了华盛顿的“选举完整性峰会”，与会者包括许多曾帮助特朗普推翻2020年选举的人士。
在奥尔森从白宫职位上继续追查选举欺诈的同时，消息人士称特朗普已授予他接触与2020年选举相关的情报界机密信息的权限——这一举措首次由《Politico》报道。
熟悉此事的消息人士表示，中央情报局（CIA）和国家安全局（NSA）正积极讨论如何分享此类材料。他们已向奥尔森提供了2020年的相关信息，但目前其调查范围仅限于该次选举。
奥尔森还与FBI副局长安德鲁·贝利（Andrew Bailey）合作，后者也出现在富尔顿县搜查现场，共同试图重新审理2020年选举。
参议院和众议院情报委员会的民主党议员对特朗普政府允许奥尔森接触与外国选举干预相关的高度机密材料表示关切，但仍在努力了解他将获得的材料范围。
一位美国官员将奥尔森关于2020年选举的有据可查的观点描述为“古怪”，但承认仅以此不足以限制他接触相关机密情报，因为他显然已获得总统赋予的广泛调查授权。此外，奥尔森还通过了美国情报官员的审查，未发现阻止其接触机密信息的“红标”。
奥尔森的角色在法院解封FBI搜查富尔顿县选票的搜查令申请后曝光，其中包括一份描述调查“源于奥尔森提交的举报”的宣誓书。
该申请的宣誓书基于极右翼圈子长期流传的选举欺诈指控，例如选票图像失踪或计票差异等理论，这些均已被州方调查并证实未影响最终结果。
富尔顿县在要求联邦政府归还被搜选票的诉讼中指控司法部“严重遗漏”了可能质疑其证人可信度的信息，并指出奥尔森曾被多个法院制裁。
曾参与数千次选举工作的选举技术与安全专家瑞安·马西亚斯（Ryan Macias）在为富尔顿县作证时表示，FBI的宣誓书充满了“对选举运作事实的严重歪曲，与所有先前调查2020年11月富尔顿县选举的结论完全相悖”。
司法部则为自己辩护，称奥尔森的角色“被过度解读”，其举报仅作为调查起点，未依赖其证人证词或证据。法官取消了2月27日对搜查令的听证会安排，将争议交由调解处理。
自2025年10月上任以来，奥尔森的角色一直是“特别政府雇员”——这一联邦职位允许顾问在一年内最多工作130天。
奥尔森的法律生涯始于企业客户代表，后转向选举阴谋论追查。他曾在加州律师协会2023年对约翰·伊斯特曼（John Eastman）的纪律审判中作证，称其在选举后观看视频和阅读报告后，认为“有诸多不合理之处”。
奥尔森通过一位律师朋友进入特朗普圈子，该朋友将他介绍给同为柯克兰校友的前克林顿特别检察官肯·斯塔尔（Ken Starr），随后他加入了一群计划在最高法院挑战几个摇摆州选举人团投票的律师。
尽管他们试图联合多个共和党州检察长加入诉讼，但仅有得克萨斯州检察长肯·帕克斯顿（Ken Paxton）签署。“在我看来，得州检察长帕克斯顿在认识到选举存在严重问题后挺身而出，展现了勇气。”奥尔森作证时表示。
最高法院驳回得州诉讼后，奥尔森转向司法部，威胁时任代理司法部长杰弗里·罗森（Jeffrey Rosen）称“你会迫使我致电总统，说你拒不配合”。
2021年1月6日晚，在支持特朗普的暴徒冲击国会后，特朗普与奥尔森两次通话。此后，奥尔森与迈克·林德尔（MyPillow创始人）、卡丽·雷克等人合作，代表雷克参与2022年亚利桑那州州长选举诉讼，并因虚假陈述被亚利桑那州最高法院制裁。
2020年12月，奥尔森从其律所“Klafter, Olsen and Laffer”休假，2021年2月正式离职。当月，特朗普将他介绍给林德尔，奥尔森开始代表林德尔应对选举欺诈指控及Dominion Voting Systems的诽谤诉讼。
Lake的证人克莱·帕里克（Clay Parikh）如今也在特朗普政府工作，并被提及在富尔顿县搜查令中。
奥尔森在2023年林德尔诉Dominion诽谤案的证词中称，自己更视此为“拯救国家的努力”，而非追求利润。
CNN记者阿拉娜·特琳（Alayna Treene）对此报道亦有贡献。
Key 2020 election denier is still working to prove it was stolen — now from inside the White House
2026-03-08T09:00:33.891Z / CNN
Kurt Olsen became a key player in some of President Donald Trump’s most far-fetched 2020 election reversal schemes because he believed “that something was not right” in how he saw election officials handle the presidential count in Fulton County, Georgia, and elsewhere.
Five years later, he’s back on familiar ground — in Trump’s ear and focused on Fulton County. The man who once described his hunt for voter fraud as an effort to “save the country” now has a direct line to the president, giving him more influence than ever.
After Olsen worked alongside some of the most prominent 2020 election deniers while Trump was out of office, the president named him the White House’s director of election security and integrity in October. From his new perch, Olsen drafted the criminal referral to the Justice Department that led to an unprecedented FBI seizure of Fulton County’s 2020 ballots in January.
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Olsen has access to Trump through his role and calls the president directly, sources familiar with internal White House deliberations tell CNN. While there is a larger White House push related to “election integrity” and voting that’s focused on future elections, the sources say Olsen’s work is mostly on a separate track reexamining the 2020 election, which Trump still falsely claims was stolen. Olsen’s 2020 efforts also overlap with those of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, whose presence at the Fulton County FBI search has prompted numerous questions about her involvement.
“He’s just kind of doing his own thing,” one White House official told CNN.
Olsen did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
The Fulton ballot seizure alarmed state election officials who are fearful of what the administration is planning for the midterms amid Trump’s call to “nationalize” elections and his stated plans to issue a new executive order related to voting.
“I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future. There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last month.
The federal government also has been pushing states to hand over their voter rolls, prompting even some Republican state officials to push back.
The Fulton County seizure has underscored the lack of legal brakes in this administration, as the types of attorneys in the first Trump administration who stood in Trump and Olsen’s way — preventing the federal government from getting involved in the president’s most flagrant election reversal gambits — are no longer around to play a similar role.
“He’s emblematic of the change in guard between Trump 1 and Trump 2,” Stephen Richer, who was a top Republican election official in Arizona’s Maricopa County from 2021 to 2025, said of Olsen. “Usually someone of his caliber would not have gotten the time of day during the first Trump administration.”
Richer, who was a defendant in a 2022 election fraud case brought by Olsen on behalf of Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, said that Olsen inspired what was previously “unthinkable” in the world of election administration: the federal seizure of ballots. (Richer later brought a defamation case against Lake for her false claims that he had “sabotaged” the election, which was settled in 2024.)
The presence of Gabbard, who leads the intelligence community but has no role in domestic law enforcement matters, at the Fulton County seizure has further raised suspicions about what the Trump administration is planning. (Her office says she’s leading “counterintelligence matters related to election security.”)
“Tulsi Gabbard, through Kurt Olsen, is going to say, without any basis in fact, that there’s evidence foreign intelligence services have compromised vote tabulation software and had manipulated it in 2020 and that therefore it’s very important that states follow these executive orders that have come out about voter ID and mail in votes,” predicted one attorney who is familiar with internal discussions about the investigation.
Trump’s allies outside the White House have been pushing an executive order, written last spring, that would declare a national emergency to enact new federal powers over elections, which are run by states under the Constitution. The draft document, which was obtained by CNN and first reported by The Washington Post, includes curbing most mail-in voting and banning the use of voting machines, which are at the heart of many 2020 election conspiracies.
While White House officials say Trump could pursue an executive order related to voter ID if Congress does not pass the SAVE Act, there’s no indication yet that the White House is considering declaring a national emergency. Trump told reporters recently he had not heard about the draft order.
Last month, Olsen was one of a half-dozen Trump administration officials who attended an “election integrity summit” in Washington alongside many who worked to help Trump overturn the 2020 election, ProPublica reported.
As Olsen hunts for election fraud from his White House position, sources say Trump has granted him access to classified information from the intelligence community related to the 2020 election, a move that was first reported by Politico.
Sources familiar with the matter said the CIA and the National Security Agency are in active conversations about how they share such material. They’ve provided information about 2020 to Olsen, the sources said, but so far his scope has been limited to that election.
Olsen has also worked with FBI Deputy Director Andrew Bailey, who was present at the Fulton County search, in his efforts to relitigate the 2020 election, according to the sources.
Democratic lawmakers on the Senate and House Intelligence committees have raised concerns about the Trump administration’s decision to allow Olsen access to highly classified material related to foreign election interference efforts — but are still working to get an understanding of the scope of material he will be provided, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
One US official characterized Olsen’s well-documented views about the 2020 election as “kooky” but acknowledged that, on its own, is not reason enough to restrict his access to relevant classified intelligence since he clearly has been given a broad investigative mandate by the president. Olsen has also been vetted by US intelligence officials who did not identify any “red flags” that would prevent him from accessing classified information, according to a source familiar with the matter.
A White House official said every person given access to classified information “goes through an extensive background review, including record checks and personal interviews.”
The Fulton County search was the first evidence of Olsen’s impact. His role came to light when a court unsealed the FBI’s search warrant application for the county’s ballots, including an affidavit that described the investigation as having “originated from a referral” sent by Olsen.
The application’s affidavit is built around allegations of election fraud that have long circulated in far-right circles, such as theories of missing ballot images or other alleged discrepancies in the count, which have already been investigated by the state and found not to have affected the final results.
In a court case demanding the federal government return the seized election materials, Fulton County accused the Justice Department of making “serious” omissions of information that would have cast doubt on the credibility of the witnesses it was using to justify the search. The county also noted that Olsen had been sanctioned by multiple courts.
The FBI’s affidavit was full of “gross mischaracterizations of the facts of how elections work and are directly at odds with the findings and conclusions of all of the prior investigations of the November 2020 election in Fulton County,” Ryan Macias, an election technology and security expert who has worked on thousands of elections, wrote in a declaration on the county’s behalf.
In response, the Justice Department distanced itself from Olsen’s role as DOJ attorneys argued that Fulton County’s claims of bias were “exceedingly weak.”
“For example, they attack Kurt Olsen. But the affidavit merely mentions that this investigation originated from a referral sent by Olsen. It does not rely on him as a witness or for any evidence,” DOJ wrote in a filing last month. The judge scrapped plans for a February 27 hearing in which he was expected to scrutinize the warrant, with an order that sent the dispute to mediation for now.
In his current White House role, which began in October 2025, Olsen serves as a “special government employee” — a federal employment designation for advisers who are supposed to work for the government for up to 130 days within a yearlong period.
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Bodycam released of FBI searching Georgia’s Fulton County elections office
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Bodycam released of FBI searching Georgia’s Fulton County elections office
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Olsen’s role inside the White House is all the more remarkable because he had never worked in election law before the 2020 election.
Olsen, a former Navy SEAL, had a lengthy legal career that included a stint at the Washington office of Kirland & Ellis, where he developed the connections that would lead him into Trump’s circle in the chaotic weeks after the 2020 election. Before the 2020 election, he was a partner at Klafter, Olsen and Laffer, where he worked in securities litigation.
Depositions, lawsuits, congressional testimony and other court filings from the past several years help explain how Olsen went from a lawyer representing corporate clients to a pursuer of election conspiracies.
Testifying at the 2023 California State Bar trial of John Eastman, who faced attorney disciplinary proceedings for his role helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election, Olsen said that after watching video clips and reading reports after the election, he came to believe there were “a number of things that just did not make sense.”
He pointed specifically to how the counting of ballots stopped in Fulton County in the early morning hours after the election. (Ballot processing that night was briefly paused when a water pipe burst in the counting facility.)
Olsen got into Trump’s orbit through a lawyer friend who connected him to Ken Starr, the former Clinton special counsel who was also a Kirkland alum. He was then put in touch with a small group of lawyers who worked on a plan to challenge Electoral College votes of several battleground states at the Supreme Court.
Olsen said they reached out to multiple Republican state attorneys general to join the complaint, but only Texas’ Ken Paxton signed onto the case. “In my opinion, Texas AG Paxton had the courage to step forward when he recognized that something was seriously wrong with the election,” Olsen testified.
When the Supreme Court dismissed the Texas complaint for lack of standing, Olsen turned to the Justice Department and acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. In late December, Olsen called Rosen and told him Trump wanted him to file a complaint at the Supreme Court “by noon today” to invalidate the electors for six swing states.
When Rosen resisted the demand, Olsen made a veiled threat: “You’re going to force me to call the president and tell him you’re recalcitrant,” Olsen told the acting AG, according to Rosen’s later testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
On the evening of January 6, 2021, after pro-Trump rioters attacked the Capitol, Trump and Olsen spoke by phone twice, according to the House January 6 committee’s report.
In the years since the 2020 election, Olsen has worked with some of the most prominent conservative election deniers, including MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and Lake. Olsen represented Lake when she challenged her 2022 Arizona gubernatorial loss, and he was sanctioned by the Arizona Supreme Court for making false claims in court about the legitimacy of the election.
Olsen took a leave from his law firm, Klafter, Olsen and Laffer, in December 2020, and formally left in February 2021, according to a former colleague.
That same month, Trump introduced Olsen to Lindell, Olsen said at a 2023 deposition in a defamation lawsuit a Dominion Voting Systems executive brought against Lindell. Olsen began representing Lindell as the latter pursued election fraud claims and faced defamation lawsuits from Dominion and Smartmatic.
A witness for Lake in her election contest, Clay Parikh, is now also working for the Trump administration and was cited in the Fulton County search warrant application.
Court testimony reviewed by CNN offered a window into Olsen’s thinking about his 2020 election work, such as explaining in a 2023 deposition for a lawsuit against Lindell that he had billed the MyPillow CEO only once after working with him several years.
“I view this more as an effort to save the country,” Olsen said, “so I haven’t really looked at this from a standpoint of seeking profit from my representation.”
CNN’s Alayna Treene contributed to this report.