By Erin Banco and Andrew Goudsward
WASHINGTON, June 2 (Reuters) - Kurt Olsen, a White House official who aided President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, has joined the Justice Department as a senior attorney reporting to a prosecutor seeking to build a wide-ranging criminal case against the president’s foes.
Olsen joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida on Monday, a Justice Department spokesperson confirmed.
Olsen did not immediately respond to a request
for comment. The Justice Department referred questions about his duties to the Miami-based U.S. Attorney's Office, which did not respond to inquiries.
Among the matters overseen by U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quinones, a group of prosecutors is examining whether past investigations of Trump amounted to a criminal conspiracy against him.
The effort is being supervised by Joe diGenova, a Trump ally now serving as a counselor to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and leader of a new civil rights unit in the Miami office.
In a post on X, Reding Quinones last month applauded the team diGenova is assembling.
“Joe diGenova is off to a fast start building our Criminal Civil Rights Section,” the May 19 post read. “He’s already assembled a team of 12 prosecutors, with more joining every week.”
A photo accompanying the post included Olsen among a group of people standing outside the U.S. federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, where Reding Quinones said the team met that day.
Olsen, an attorney with no prior record of experience as a prosecutor, was previously sanctioned by a federal court for making false statements while representing Trump ally Kari Lake in a case challenging Arizona voting procedures.
OLSEN INVESTIGATED VOTE-RIGGING THEORIES
Olsen has been leading the Trump administration’s election integrity effort, including reexamining Trump’s 2020 defeat and investigating disproven vote-rigging theories, as a special government employee with the White House.
Olsen's work has included probing potential foreign intervention in U.S. elections and seizing voting machines and materials in Puerto Rico, Georgia and Arizona to aid the investigation.
He has focused primarily on the disproven theory that the government of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was able to penetrate Dominion voting machines and flip votes by exploiting Venezuelan-origin code.
ELECTION PROBE INCLUDES OTHER TRUMP FOES
The Florida team's investigation has been examining earlier inquiries into Trump including the probe into ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia as well as more recent cases brought by former Special Counsel Jack Smith and the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for classified documents in 2022.
The probe is part of a larger effort by the Justice Department under Trump to pursue the president’s grievances and political enemies.
Allegations of a broad anti-Trump conspiracy could be difficult to prove given prior investigations examined different issues and some investigative steps were approved by judges and grand juries. Officials involved in those cases have repeatedly said their work was conducted appropriately.
Olsen’s work on election-related matters predates his Justice Department role. As Reuters has reported, he has worked across agencies on efforts to revisit Trump’s 2020 defeat and examine disproven claims of voter fraud.
It was unclear whether Olsen’s election-related work has been folded into the Justice Department.
Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel have said in recent weeks their offices are examining potential voter fraud in the 2020 election.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward in Washington and Erin Banco in New York; Editing by Michael Learmonth and Cynthia Osterman)
