Exclusive: Trump's 'Stop the Steal' lawyer pushed for voter fraud evidence from US intelligence agency
Source: Reuters
February 11, 2026 5:22 PM EST Updated 6 hours ago
WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - A lawyer leading efforts to bolster U.S. President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" pushed a U.S. intelligence contractor to search for evidence of voter fraud in that race, two people familiar with the events said. Mojave Research Inc. was contracted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to study vulnerabilities in voting machines used in Puerto Rico's 2024 elections. The Mojave analysts were examining the machines for potential weaknesses that hackers or others could exploit, said the sources.
The machines were removed and checked by officials and law enforcement officials in May. ODNI has said the move followed public reports about problems with the security of Puerto Rico's voting machines. Kurt Olsen, a lawyer involved with the Stop the Steal effort after Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, wanted Mojave to broaden the scope of its work and search for evidence that could support his government investigation into the validity of the 2020 election results, said the people familiar with the events, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Olsen, a former Trump campaign lawyer, has since October worked as a special government employee in the administration to re-investigate the 2020 election. At several points during Mojaves investigation in Puerto Rico, Olsen insisted in conversations with the contractor that it search for vulnerabilities that could have affected the 2020 election results, one source with direct knowledge of the matter said.
Mojave, which is based in Reston, Virginia and has done AI-based research for ODNI, instead kept its probe focused on how to secure future elections, one of the sources said. Reuters could not determine why it declined to alter the focus of its work. The role of Mojave and its interaction with Olsen have not been previously reported.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trumps-stop-steal-lawyer-pushed-voter-fraud-evidence-us-intelligence-agency-2026-02-11/
lapfog_1
(31,798 posts)Voting rights of United States citizens who live in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, like the voting rights of residents of other territories, differ from those of United States citizens in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Ricans who live in any of the 50 mainland states. Residents of Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories do not have voting representation in the United States Congress, and are not entitled to electoral votes for president.
So even if every vote in Puerto Rico was invalid for some reason or other, it didn't effect the electoral vote nor the makeup of the House or the Senate.
BGRD
(28 posts)I believe one must assume the worst with the Trump people. I don't think they are seriously looking for voter fraud. One possibility, a serious one, is that the Republicans are looking for vulnerabilities they can exploit themselves to counter "voter fraud" by electronically adjusting the results to reflect the Orange baboons wishes. A "Putin" style election.
You have probably all heard the old joke about someone breaking into the Kremlin and stealing next years election results.It now works if you substitute the White house for the Kremlin. Tulsi probably does not understand that was a joke and has her intelligence service hard at work trying to find out how it was done.
Grins
(9,347 posts)From my notes.
01 December 2022.
AZ Central
Those lawyers? Jesse Kibort, Joseph Pull, Andrew Parker, and Kurt Olsen.
Judge Tuchi found the claims were based on speculative allegations and that attorneys failed to perform adequate pre-filing inquiries into the factual (that word again) basis of their claims.
In 2023, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the dismissal of the lawsuit, agreeing it was "frivolous."
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16 Feb 2023
NBC News.
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15 March 2025
KAWC-TV
Judge Ronald Gould, writing for the majority, said Andrew Parker and Kurt Olsen made "false and misleading allegations'' in their 2022 lawsuit claiming that voting machines were unreliable and subject to manipulation.
... And he said that U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi, who imposed the sanctions after throwing out the case, was correct in concluding that the lawsuit was based on "speculation and conjecture.''
...The pair had no better luck with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which concluded they never presented any evidence that the machines used in Arizona to count ballots had actually ever been hacked. The Supreme Court refused to disturb that ruling.
