Padilla Demands Olsen Removal Over Election Security Post
Senate Democrats on Monday demanded that the White House end Kurt Olsen’s tenure as President Donald Trump’s director of election security and integrity, citing the election security role’s temporary status and the 130-day limit for a special government employee. The eleven senators said Olsen had stayed too long in a post tied to investigations in Georgia and Puerto Rico.
Led by Senate Rules and Administration Committee ranking member Alex Padilla of California, the senators wrote that they had warned Olsen would peddle conspiracy theories when he was first named. Padilla said public court filings had shown Olsen made debunked conspiracy theories the basis of the FBI’s search warrant in the administration’s raid on Fulton County, Georgia election offices.
Padilla Letter On Olsen
The letter said public reporting also showed Olsen’s investigation was behind the administration’s seizure of election equipment in Puerto Rico. Padilla wrote that Olsen “remains unpersuaded that even his own biased investigation has found no evidence for these conspiracy theories.”
Padilla also wrote, “Public reports of Olsen’s appointment date back to as early as October 18, 2025, over 200 days ago.” He added, “Thus, it is past time to end this temporary appointment or provide a full explanation of how his continued service is legally justified, including Olsen’s exact dates of service.”
Fulton County Raid Record
The senators tied their demand to records already in the public file. They said unsealed court documents showed Olsen initiated the criminal investigation into Fulton County, and that the Department of Justice admitted in ongoing litigation over the raid that he did so. A federal judge overseeing Fulton County’s lawsuit challenging the raid ordered the Justice Department to provide a timeline of events leading up to it.
The FBI also demanded in a court filing that Fulton County turn over personal information on election workers and volunteers who ran the 2020 elections. The ballots seized in Georgia were from the 2020 election, the senators wrote.
Blanche And 2020 Claims
The dispute comes as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a interview over the weekend that there was “a ton of evidence” that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Trump. Blanche declined to say when such evidence might be released, and he declined to confirm that criminal charges related to 2020 will be filed.
Multiple audits and recounts in Georgia and other states where Trump falsely claimed victory repeatedly confirmed the 2020 election results. Olsen was sanctioned by the Arizona Supreme Court in 2025 for making false statements related to his representation of Kari Lake. For readers watching the case, the immediate issue is whether the White House ends a temporary appointment that senators say has already run past the legal limit.
