{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.padilla.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/padilla-colleagues-warn-trump-may-declare-election-related-national-emergency-after-white-house-hires-prominent-election-denier-to-reexamine-2020-election-results/", "Padilla, Colleagues Warn Trump May Declare Election-Related National Emergency After White House Hires Prominent Election Denier to Reexamine 2020 Election Results", "2025-10-29", "2025", "2025-10", "Democrat", "Senate", "CA", "Alex Padilla", "P000145", "www.padilla.senate.gov", "padilla", "https://www.padilla.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/", "scraper", "Senators: Kurt Olsen\u2019s appointment seems \u201cto be part of a scheme to convince the President to attempt a national emergency declaration to illegally claim unconstitutional federal powers over state and local election administration.\u201d\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2014 Today, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and California\u2019s former Secretary of State, led eight colleagues in condemning the White House\u2019s alarming hiring of former \u201cStop the Steal\u201d and Trump campaign lawyer Kurt Olsen as a \u201cspecial government employee\u201d to \u201cinvestigate\u201d the 2020 election again, five years later. The Senators emphasized that the White House\u2019s hiring of Olsen follows a clear pattern of hiring 2020 election deniers and Trump loyalists to do election work, raising fears that senior White House staff may enable President Trump to declare a national emergency to illegally interfere in state and local election administration.\n\n\u201cThe 2020 election was heavily litigated and closely examined, and there is no justification for White House staff in 2025 to waste taxpayer money on endlessly rehashing false 2020 election conspiracy theories,\u201d wrote the Senators to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and White House Chief Counsel David Warrington. \u201cMr. Olsen is particularly ill-suited to lead such a probe, given that he advanced such conspiracy theories as he worked to prevent four battleground states from certifying the 2020 election.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us be clear: any attempt to declare a national emergency to interfere in state and local election administration would be illegal and unconstitutional,\u201d continued the Senators. \u201cWhile we are confident any such scheme would fail quickly in the face of judicial scrutiny, it still poses unacceptable risks of undermining future elections in this country. Therefore, we demand you closely oversee Mr. Olsen and other appointees to ensure they do not engage in illegal or unethical conduct in pursuit of an unconstitutional national emergency regarding elections.\u201d\n\nOn President Trump\u2019s 2020 campaign, Olsen worked to prevent the certification of valid election results in four states ahead of the January 6th Capitol insurrection. Since then, he has also been sanctioned by Arizona\u2019s Supreme Court for lies he told to try to overturn the results in Kari Lake\u2019s 2022 gubernational bid, and he pushed President Trump to make legal demands around voter data in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia ahead of the 2024 election to set up future election challenges. Olsen\u2019s position reportedly has \u201cdirect\u201d access to the President, raising concerns after he said he wants to examine election machines and repeatedly spread unfounded misinformation that these machines are not secure, despite major news networks paying hundreds of millions in defamation settlements for similar lies.\n\nOlsen\u2019s hiring comes after other prominent election deniers like Heather Honey, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity at the Department of Homeland Security, have pressured President Trump to declare a \u201cnational emergency\u201d to unconstitutionally influence how states administer elections. Prior to her appointment, Honey advocated for Trump to seize \u201csome additional powers that don\u2019t exist right now,\u201d bypass Congress\u2019 authority, and \u201cmandate that states do things,\u201d predicating these changes on an investigation of the 2020 election and senior White House staff cooperation. Olsen\u2019s appointment to rehash 2020 election conspiracy theories further raises alarm bells on the potential for Trump to declare a national emergency.\n\nThe Senators also condemned Trump\u2019s anti-voter executive order illegally directing the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to revise voting system standards and rescind voting machine certifications, and they slammed the President\u2019s threat to issue another illegal and unconstitutional executive order to ban mail-in ballots. They pushed White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and White House Counsel David Warrington to also make sure Olsen and other appointees follow the bipartisan Help America Vote Act that established EAC as an independent entity outside of the White House\u2019s unilateral control.\n\nIn addition to Senator Padilla, the letter was also signed by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).\n\nSenator Padilla has led the charge opposing President Trump\u2019s unlawful attempt at a Presidential power grab through his anti-voter executive order. Earlier this year, Padilla led 14 Democratic Senators in calling on President Trump to revoke his illegal executive order that would disenfranchise millions of Americans. Padilla also led 11 Senators in introducing the Defending America\u2019s Future Elections Act to repeal the order and prevent the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing sensitive voter registration data and state records. Additionally, Padilla and U.S. Representative Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.-25) warned officials at the EAC about the dangerous implications for elections following President Trump\u2019s executive order purporting to bring independent regulatory agencies under total control of the White House.\n\nFull text of the letter is available here and below:\n\nDear Ms. Wiles and Mr. Warrington,\n\nWe write with serious concern that Kurt Olsen has reportedly been hired by the White House as a \u201cspecial government employee\u201d to \u201cinvestigate\u201d the 2020 election.\n\nWhile the 2020 election was nearly five years ago, Mr. Olsen\u2019s appointment appears to be part of a scheme to convince the President to attempt a national emergency declaration to illegally claim unconstitutional federal powers over state and local election administration. Any such declaration would quickly fail to withstand legal scrutiny, but it would still represent a completely unacceptable attempt to undermine the U.S. Constitution and free and fair elections in this country. We write to remind you of your responsibilities to oversee any work conducted by Mr. Olsen, and other similarly minded appointees, to ensure they do not violate legal and ethical standards and undermine the future of free and fair elections in this country.\n\nUnfortunately, these concerns are very real. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity at the Department of Homeland Security Heather Honey has advocated for the Trump Administration to declare a \u201cnational emergency\u201d to seize \u201csome additional powers that don\u2019t exist right now\u201d in order to take \u201cthese other steps without Congress and we can mandate that states do things and so on.\u201d Ms. Honey claimed that such an action could somehow be prefaced on an \u201cinvestigation\u201d of the 2020 election, the purpose for which Mr. Olsen has been hired at the White House. Notably, she stated: \u201cI don\u2019t know if that\u2019s really feasible and if the people around the president would let him test that theory.\u201d Ms. Honey is a veteran of the Election Integrity Network, the group founded by Cleta Mitchell, who supported Trump\u2019s attempt to reverse the legitimate outcome of the 2020 election. Ms. Honey collaborated with Mr. Olsen in his efforts to support Kari Lake\u2019s 2022 election loss in Arizona.\n\nThe 2020 election was heavily litigated and closely examined, and there is no justification for White House staff in 2025 to waste taxpayer money on endlessly rehashing false 2020 election conspiracy theories. Mr. Olsen is particularly ill-suited to lead such a probe, given that he advanced such conspiracy theories as he worked to prevent four battleground states from certifying the 2020 election. When all legal avenues were exhausted, he spoke with President Trump in the lead up to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, where a violent mob assaulted the Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral votes. Since then, Mr. Olsen has received sanctions from the Arizona Supreme Court for \u201cunequivocally false\u201d claims made to overturn the 2022 Arizona governor\u2019s race on behalf of Kari Lake. More recently, he encouraged President Trump to make unfounded legal demands of Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia relating to voting machine data, to lay the groundwork to challenge the results of the 2024 election if President Trump had lost again.\n\nMr. Olsen has also perpetuated false claims that voting machines were not properly secured during the 2020 election. Major news networks that carried such false claims have paid hundreds of millions in legal settlements brought by voting equipment companies for defamation. Meanwhile, the Administration has shown no concern for the actual needs of state and local election administration by proposing to slash election security grant funding and eliminating the election-related work at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).\n\nMr. Olsen\u2019s appointment also raises concerns in light of Executive Order 14248 which purports to direct the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to revise voting system standards and, concerningly, \u201crescind all previous certifications of voting equipment based on prior standards.\u201d You both have a duty to ensure that Mr. Olsen and other appointees follow the Help America Vote Act, which was enacted on an overwhelming bipartisan basis, and establishes the EAC as an independent entity that cannot be unilaterally directed from the White House.\n\nIn August, President Trump threatened to issue a second illegal and unconstitutional Executive Order on elections in an attempt to ban mail-in ballots. As you know, the President himself has voted by mail, as do millions of Republicans, Democrats and independents in numerous states according to state laws. The U.S. Constitution gives exclusive power over the administration of elections to the states and Congress, not the president, and we understand that this second Executive Order has not been issued following further internal discussions.\n\nLet us be clear: any attempt to declare a national emergency to interfere in state and local election administration would be illegal and unconstitutional. While we are confident any such scheme would fail quickly in the face of judicial scrutiny, it still poses unacceptable risks of undermining future elections in this country. Therefore, we demand you closely oversee Mr. Olsen and other appointees to ensure they do not engage in illegal or unethical conduct in pursuit of an unconstitutional national emergency regarding elections.\n\nSincerely,\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:32:54Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.padilla.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/padilla-colleagues-warn-trump-may-declare-election-related-national-emergency-after-white-house-hires-prominent-election-denier-to-reexamine-2020-election-results/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.9217759147286415, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}