By Erin Banco
WASHINGTON, May 18 (Reuters) – A group of Democratic lawmakers is calling for the removal of Kurt Olsen, the White House’s election security czar, claiming his time working as a special government employee had surpassed the legal limit.
The group, led by Senator Alex Padilla, who represents California, wrote to the White House on Monday, urging the administration to remove Olsen or to explain “how his continued service is legally justified,” according to a copy of the letter seen by Reuters. Padilla is the ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee.
Under U.S. law, special government employees can only serve 130 days in a 365-day period. Trump appointed Olsen as a special government employee in October, which would mean he has exceeded that limit, the senators say.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Olsen is a Washington attorney who was involved with the “Stop the Steal” effort after Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
He and several of Trump’s other former lawyers have repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” from Trump – an assertion that has repeatedly been debunked in the courts.
Trump tapped Olsen again last year to lead the administration’s efforts to prove that he won the 2020 election and that foreign actors had interfered in U.S. voting machines.
Olsen began working with the administration as early as February 2025 and pushed a U.S. intelligence contractor to search for evidence of voter fraud in 2020, Reuters has previously reported.
Co-signers of the letter include Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee, and other senators who serve on an election security task force that seeks to mitigate threats to the midterm elections.
Padilla told Reuters in an interview on Monday that the group behind the letter had previously registered concerns with the White House about Olsen’s appointment as a special government employee and that his involvement in the seizing of voting machines and material in Georgia, Puerto Rico and Arizona had raised questions on Capitol Hill about the extent to which the White House is trying to federalize the elections.
Given his title inside the White House, Olsen has oversight over how the administration is attempting to implement an executive order signed by Trump in March of 2025.
That order laid out a roadmap for the administration to take control over parts of the voting process. It called on states to, among other things, share voter data with the federal government. It also said states should decertify voting machines in 36 states.
As Reuters reported last month, Olsen has spent the past year working on an investigation to prove that U.S. voting machines have been tampered with and that Trump won the 2020 race.
“If there’s a role for the federal government, it’s from Congress, not the executive branch, to help determine the time, place, and manner of elections. Not the president,” Padilla said. “But (Trump) continues to claim otherwise and people like Kurt Olsen are enabling that conspiratorial thinking.”
(Reporting by Erin Banco; Editing by Don Durfee and Rosalba O’Brien)
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