The New York Times recently published several unsettling reports concerning the upcoming Midterms, including "Republican Cash Edge Threatens to Swamp Democrats" and "House Passes Strict Voter ID Bill."
Relying on the Midterms as the last bastion against autocracy may be chimerical, given what this administration is doing on its way to destroying our institutions, culture, and global agreements. The third article in the NYT yesterday underscores just how hopeless it might be to rely on those elections to bring us back from total oblivion: "Trump’s Director of Election Security Is an Election Denier; Even in a government full of conspiracists, Kurt Olsen stands out."
Appointing Kurt Olsen as the Director of Election Security and Integrity is the ultimate "fox in the henhouse" scenario. The administration hasn’t just invited the fox inside to guard the coop; they’ve given him a badge, a flashlight, and the authority to decide which hens are "legally" allowed to lay eggs. Putting a man sanctioned for spreading election falsehoods in charge of "integrity" feels like a satirical plot point a novelist would reject as too preposterous.
He now has the authority to refer criminal investigations to the federal government—a power he has already used to catalyze a recent FBI probe into the 2020 election results in Fulton County, Georgia.
Following the 2020 election, Olsen worked "round the clock" on a Supreme Court case seeking to reverse Trump’s defeat and pressured the Justice Department to take up similar suits.
He has a long history of collaborating with conspiracy theorists such as Mike Lindell of PillowGuy fame and representing figures like Kari Lake in unsuccessful legal challenges.
He was previously sanctioned in federal court for making "false, misleading, and unsupported factual assertions" during election litigation in Arizona.
His appointment is part of an apparent "multipronged approach" to challenge state power over elections as the administration begins to cast doubt on the upcoming Midterms.
This is all happening before our eyes, just as the January 6th insurrection did. The records from the House Select Committee explicitly link Olsen to the strategies surrounding that day; while he was a private attorney then, his actions were deeply integrated with the White House’s response to the certification process.
This administration has long defended its most outrageous actions by laughably citing "transparency" as "proof" of validity. So, there it is—the fox in the henhouse. Thankfully, the "Fourth Estate" still has a pulse after the diminishment of the Washington Post to point this out.
"Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see?"
