By Erin Banco, Phil Stewart and Jonathan Landay
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 Mojave’s 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.
The company’s contract with the ODNI was terminated last October, according to one of the people. Reuters could not independently confirm why the contract ended.
An official with ODNI said Olsen was not involved in the agency’s “examination of electronic voting systems used in Puerto Rico’s elections” but did not dispute his interactions with the spy agency on voting security matters.
Olsen and the White House did not respond to requests for comment about the search for evidence of election fraud. Mojave declined to comment.
The president of the Puerto Rico State Elections Commission, Jorge Rivera Rueda, said it “will fully cooperate with any investigative process conducted by the appropriate authorities, whether at the state or federal level.”
Olsen’s actions show how some Trump officials are attempting to use the U.S. intelligence community to prove their charges that the 2020 election was stolen, a long-standing Trump claim repeatedly rejected by courts. U.S. intelligence agencies are not authorized by Congress or presidential order to engage in domestic politics.
While not an intelligence official, Olsen has been involved in ODNI work, which the sources described as unusual. He participated in election security-related discussions with ODNI even before he was given his official government role, they added.
The ODNI official described Olsen’s involvement in discussions prior to his appointment as “voluntary.”
An FBI affidavit made public on Tuesday named Olsen as the official whose referral launched the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation into the 2020 election in Georgia. That investigation has included an FBI search last month of an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, and the affidavit details the justification for it.
A FOCUS ON 2020 FRAUD
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s team, which has consisted of officials, law enforcement agents and contractors, has hauled away and analyzed voting machines and data from Georgia and Puerto Rico. Reuters first reported the removal of the machines from Puerto Rico.
ODNI contracted with Mojave, which was already doing work with the agency, to probe voting machines from Puerto Rico in the spring of 2025, the sources said.
The intelligence agency told Reuters in a statement last week that Puerto Rico’s machines had a system that was “highly vulnerable to exploits,” but offered few details on whether and how the agency was going to act on its conclusions.
Many U.S. states and Puerto Rico use machines made by Dominion, the company that was at the center of a false 2020 election conspiracy theory. Liberty Vote, owned by a former Republican elections director for St. Louis, acquired Dominion last year.
A spokesperson for Liberty Vote did not respond to a request for comment.
Mojave submitted its findings to ODNI in July. The findings, which Reuters hasn’t seen, revealed problems with the machines, including with their software, and suggested that those issues could exist in other machines across the U.S., one of the sources said.
But it did not produce clear evidence that Olsen could use in his 2020 probe, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Mojave has proposed a plan to strengthen the nation’s election infrastructure, one of the sources said, adding that the plan has yet to be implemented. In its comments to Reuters, ODNI did not address questions about the company’s proposal.
(Reporting by Erin Banco, Phil Stewart and Jonathan Landay; Editing by Don Durfee, Lincoln Feast and Daniel Wallis)
