Election denier Kurt Olsen steps down from "grand conspiracy" case, but remains on DOJ payroll, official says

Kurt Olsen, an election denier who attempted to overturn the 2020 election results in favor of President Trump, is resigning from his role in the "grand conspiracy" investigation targeting Obama- and Biden-era officials, a Justice Department official said on Wednesday.

Olsen announced his intention to depart from the case in an email on Monday to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

CBS News reported on Monday that Olsen was resigning from the Justice Department, after DOJ officials in both Miami and Washington misinterpreted Olsen's email and thought he was leaving the federal government altogether, a department official said on Wednesday.

It was only after multiple media outlets ran stories about his resignation that Olsen later called Justice Department officials to clarify that he still intends to remain employed there as an attorney, the official said.

Olsen did not return an email seeking comment.

Confusion over Olsen's role spilled into public view earlier on Wednesday, when Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked about the news reports of Olsen's resignation during an unrelated press conference.

"Kurt Olsen has not resigned," Blanche said, adding that there was an "incredible amount of fake news" out there. 

When pressed whether Olsen had left the investigation, Blanche replied: "He's still employed exactly where he was before."

But a department official later clarified that while Olsen will still be on staff as senior counsel, he will not be assigned to the grand conspiracy matter.

It remains unclear what work Olsen will be performing in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of Florida, since another obstacle has emerged.

Before he submitted his email resigning from the case, a problem arose with his security clearance, two sources with knowledge of the matter told CBS News.

The lack of a security clearance means Olsen could not effectively work on the grand conspiracy investigation, which entails reviewing classified evidence related to a variety of topics — ranging from the intelligence assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to the investigation by former special counsel Jack Smith into President Trump's retention of classified records.

Two sources said that Olsen has expressed an interest in possibly transferring to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of North Carolina to work for Dan Bishop on election matters, but it is unclear whether that will materialize.

Olsen is the third prosecutor this year to step down from working on the grand conspiracy case and a separate related probe into whether former CIA Director John Brennan lied to Congress about the agency's role in the intelligence assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Maria Medetis Long, the head of the national security section in the Southern District of Florida, was removed from the case in April after she raised concerns about the strength of the evidence.

She was quickly replaced by Joe diGenova, a former federal prosecutor in the 1980s who returned to the Justice Department to spearhead the grand conspiracy case.

Even as witnesses were preparing to appear for testimony before the grand jury in Florida, diGenova abruptly resigned in September amid tensions with the Deputy Attorney General's Office over the management of the case.

He represented Mr. Trump's campaign in its failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. 

He has long railed against Brennan's role in assessing that Russia tried to meddle in the 2016 election, referring to him in one interview as the "primogenitor of the entire counterintelligence investigation."

Olsen joined the Southern District of Florida as a senior counsel sometime in the spring. 

He previously worked in the White House as a "Presidentially appointed Director of Election Security and Integrity," the FBI said. In 2020, Olsen was an attorney working with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to urge the Supreme Court to overturn the election results.

Earlier this year, Olsen made the Fulton County election case referral to the FBI, prompting agents to execute a search warrant earlier this year. They seized dozens of boxes of ballots and other materials from the 2020 election, an FBI affidavit revealed.

Olsen has also made several other 2020 election-related referrals to the Justice Department, including one in Arizona, according to a source with direct knowledge.