Trump hired them to prove election conspiracies. They all left without proving anything

Earlier this week, Kurt Olsen, who was brought into the Trump administration last year to probe voter fraud — abruptly resigned as a federal prosecutor. 

Olsen becomes the latest in a string of  Trump loyalists to quit their posts after being brought in to prove 2020 election conspiracy theories, or indict the president’s political enemies, and utterly failing to do so. 

The series of resignations serves as a stark reminder of how Trump has weaponized his administration to wage his political battles. 

But it also underscores how, though Trump has directed enormous federal resources to proving false claims of voter fraud and conspiracies related to the 2020 presidential election, the effort has come up empty.

The tally below doesn’t include Clay Parikh, a cybersecurity specialist with ties to MyPillow CEO and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell — who was brought into the administration on a temporary basis to work alongside Olsen. His employment ran out before he was able to prove any election fraud.

Here are the hardcore election deniers Trump brought on that have all resigned in recent months after coming up empty-handed. 

Kurt Olsen

Trump brought Olsen on in October 2025 to lead a special White House task force probing 2020 election conspiracies. Olsen, one of the chief architects of the Stop the Steal movement, played a central role in the FBI’s January raid of a Fulton County, Georgia elections hub and reportedly spearheaded a failed probe into voting machines used in Puerto Rico for the 2020 election. 

But Olsen’s efforts as a White House SGE ultimately did not uncover any evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. As an SGE, Olsen’s employment was limited to 130 days, but he stayed in the position for longer than the law allowed, prompting a coalition of Democratic senators to demand his termination.

Olsen was finally reassigned to the DOJ in June, to work out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida on a sprawling probe alleging a “grand conspiracy” by Trump’s perceived enemies to sabotage his first term and reelection campaign. But Olsen quit his DOJ post earlier this week — the second prominent figure tasked with investigating Trump’s political foes to resign this month. 

Joe diGenova

When diGenova — a hardcore Trump loyalist and veteran GOP operative who backed the president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss — was appointed in April to the DOJ team in South Florida, it raised eyebrows. DiGenova wasn’t explicitly tasked with investigating Trump’s past election conspiracies, but he led the sprawling “grand conspiracy” case — an adjacent pet project for the president.

The probe and diGenova’s appointment were another turning point in the erosion of the DOJ’s longstanding independence from the White House. DiGenova was tapped because Trump saw him as someone who could ramp up the conspiracy investigation, which had stalled in the department. But diGenova abruptly resigned earlier this month without making any indictments in the controversial probe.

According to reports, diGenova quit amid pressure from Attorney General Todd Blanche to make progress in the case, which has dragged on since last year. 

Ed Martin 

Martin’s tenure in the Trump administration was plagued by controversy from the beginning. When Trump nominated him to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, he failed to gain enough GOP support to be confirmed. Martin — a longtime attorney, staunch Trump ally, and 2020 conspiracy theorist, represented several Jan. 6 rioters — which ultimately caused his nomination to fail. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) refused to vote for Martin because of his past work defending U.S. Capitol rioters. 

Trump then appointed Martin to multiple roles in the DOJ, as pardon attorney and head of the department’s Weaponization Working Group, where he served a chaotic tenure before departing in August. 

During his time in the DOJ, Martin played a key role in trying to prosecute Trump’s political enemies. But he also was central to the DOJ’s efforts to probe 2020 voting conspiracies. In November 2025, Martin sent a letter to Fulton County officials demanding access to 148,000 ballots cast in the 2020 election. The demand was spurred by false claims of voter fraud in that election, boosted by prominent election deniers.

The DOJ has yet to produce any evidence that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump.

Martin left the Trump administration to do outside voting-related legal work that Trump said on social media would “ensure Free, Fair, and Honest Elections, and strongly advance our Constitutional Rights.” He’s also hosting his own show, titled “The Early Bird,” for former Trump senior advisor Steve Bannon’s media network.

Tulsi Gabbard

As the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Gabbard played a key role in the president’s efforts to probe 2020 voting conspiracies — a bizarre position for the country’s spy chief. 

Gabbard took part in the FBI’s Fulton County raid in January, during which the bureau obtained original ballots and other sensitive voting information. It was extraordinarily unusual for the country’s top intelligence officer to be involved in a domestic operation — the DNI is typically concerned with foreign matters. 

But what was more unusual was what Gabbard told lawmakers in a March congressional hearing that Trump directed her to take part in the raid and implied he had advance knowledge of the raid against the county. 

It wasn’t the only voter fraud conspiracy investigation Gabbard directed as DNI. Her office also seized voting machines from Puerto Rico to probe them for security vulnerabilities, spurred by false claims pushed by election deniers that Venezuela had hacked the machines. 

Before she resigned in May to care for her husband, who was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, Gabbard worked closely with Olsen in his failed quest to prove election conspiracies. Specifically, one of Gabbard’s senior aides was involved in an Olsen-led effort to ban voting machines by having the Department of Commerce declare their components national security risks, according to reporting from Reuters.

Andrew Bailey

Former Missouri attorney general and avowed election denier Andrew Bailey was appointed a little over a year ago as a co-deputy director of the FBI, where he led the bureau’s investigation of the 2020 election. But Bailey resigned from his post this week — the same day as Olsen — without proving any election fraud evidence. 

In his FBI role, Bailey was directed by Trump to oversee the Fulton County election hub raid — a rare role for a top bureau official, considering the highly politicized nature of the raid. Even more concerning: Trump ordered Gabbard to coordinate with Bailey on the Fulton County raid, according to the New York Times, which raised ethics questions about the compromised independence of both the FBI and DNI.

Bailey said this week he was leaving his FBI role to spend more time with his family in Missouri.