Kurt Olsen, who previously worked as Trump’s election security czar, left the so-called “grand conspiracy” investigation Monday.
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Another prominent Trump loyalist working on the wide-ranging conspiracy investigation in Florida into President Donald Trump’s political foes has abruptly left the probe, according to three people familiar with the matter, marking the latest departure in a high-profile inquiry that has become a central focus for the administration and its allies.
Kurt Olsen — who before joining to the so-called “grand conspiracy” investigation in June had served several months as Trump’s election security czar — tendered his resignation from the Justice Department on Monday, the people said. Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.
Two of the people said Olsen had become frustrated by pressure from Justice Department officials in Washington to increase the pace of the probe and secure grand jury indictments. The third person, who disputed that description, said Olsen left after issues arose with his security clearance that prevented his further involvement.
The resignation was the latest staffing shake-up to roil the investigation in recent days, prompting questions about its direction and its future. Earlier this month, Joseph diGenova, another Trump ally who was appointed to lead the inquiry, suddenly quit five months in after publicly lobbying for the job.
Multiple other attorneys who had been dispatched to Florida to work on the case have since left to return to previous assignments or take on new ones, and other new lawyers have since joined the case, the three people familiar with the staffing situation said.
They all spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the inner workings of the “grand conspiracy” investigation, which has become the ambitious and legally complicated investigation of the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute Trump’s political foes.
The theory, as officials have described it, is that high-ranking officials from the Obama and Biden administrations engaged in a decades-long, “deep state” conspiracy to violate Trump’s civil rights.
Those efforts, investigators contend, include the FBI and intelligence community investigations of potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign, as well as the push under special counsel Jack Smith to prosecute Trump after his first term for allegedly mishandling classified documents.
Speaking to The Washington Post earlier this month, DiGenova declined to discuss in detail the reasons for his departure, saying in a text message that he still believed in the strength of the case the team was building, but that “time was needed to build those cases” and “people differ on how long that should take.”
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He was the second prosecutor overseeing the investigation to step aside. Maria Medetis Long, a veteran national security prosecutor in Miami, left the investigation in April after expressing discomfort with its direction, The Post has reported.
Olsen joined soon after Meditis’s departure. Before that role, Olsen had been working in the White House, investigating Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen and had played a central role in initiating the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the vote count in Fulton County, Georgia, which was pivotal to Trump’s loss that year.
Before the second Trump administration, Olsen was among a group of lawyers who had unsuccessfully pushed the Justice Department in 2020 to endorse those false claims.
His resignation from the Justice Department and the “grand conspiracy case” was first reported Monday by the Daily Mail.
Despite that staffing uncertainty, signs have emerged in recent days that the investigation is moving forward under the leadership of Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney in Miami whose office has been tasked with overseeing the probe.
Attorneys for former CIA director John Brennan — one of the investigation’s purported targets — said in a recent court filing that he had been subpoenaed to testify next week before a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida. Several former FBI agents tied to the 2022 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida have also indicated that they have been summoned to offer testimony.
Two of Attorney General Todd Blanche’s top deputies, Trent McCotter and Aakash Singh, traveled to Florida in recent weeks to meet with the investigative team, a person familiar with that trip said.
Speaking Monday, a Justice Department spokesperson rejected any suggestion that top officials had pressured DiGenova, Olsen or anyone else involved in the “grand conspiracy” investigation to bring charges before the inquiry was complete.
“Leadership has full confidence in the great team of experienced prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida led by U.S. Attorney Quiñones,” the department said in a statement. “Work on this investigation continues, and we are grateful to the talented team of attorneys, which continues to grow, doing the work each day.”
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Patrick Marley contributed to this report.
