Marc Elias, an election lawyer, warned on Sunday that President Donald Trump's latest hire poses a threat to the 2026 midterm elections.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration had hired Kurt Olsen as a Special Government Employee at the Justice Department focused on election fraud cases. Being a special government employee means that Olsen can only work for 120 days a year, although the Trump administration has tried unsuccessfully to extend the duration of some temporary employees.
Olsen also worked on Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election, according to the report, and is joining the department at a time when it is seeking to force states to turn over their voting data.
Elias described Olsen as a "crackpot election denier" during an interview with progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen on Sunday.
"This is dangerous on a whole host of levels," Elias said, mentioning that Olsen has advanced "wide-eyed crazy conspiracy theories" about vote tabulating machines and attacked mail-in voting.
"That's just the beginning of what these problems can be," Elias continued. "You cannot disconnect that from the fact that the January 6th insurrection came out of these big lies. It came out of this election in nihilism. And those folks have all been pardoned and who knows what some of them may be planning for 2026."
"And then you have the military being deployed throughout this country in blue cities where you know the vote totals are going to matter a lot for who wins and loses elections," he added. "...It is something to take very seriously as we move forward."