Tempers flare as Trump's voter fraud hunt implodes — again

President Donald Trump has had yet another falling-out with a contractor paid to buttress his 2020 election conspiracies.

Writing for MS NOW, producer and editor Steve Benen recalled the Berkeley Research Group, which was hired by Trump in 2020 to find voter fraud that could prove he won.

The Washington Postreported at the time, "Researchers paid by Trump’s team had 'high confidence' of only nine dead voters in Fulton County, defined as ballots that may have been cast by someone else in the name of a deceased person. They believed there was a 'potential statewide exposure' of 23 such votes across the Peach State — or 4,977 less than the 'minimum' Trump claimed."

There was no widespread evidence of voter fraud.

So, Trump hired Simpatico Software Systems to find the widespread voter fraud necessary to declare him the 2020 winner. They also failed to find any.

Now there's a third option, this one run by the former Trump campaign lawyer, Kurt Olsen.

"Reuters reported this week that Olsen and his colleagues set out to prove discredited conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems machines, which he apparently suspected had been infected with some kind of malicious Venezuelan code. Trump administration officials even scrutinized Dominion machines in Puerto Rico, looking for evidence that never emerged," said Benen.

The Trump team also asked another contractor to work with Olsen, but they found nothing either. This gave Olsen few options — so Olsen snapped, according to three sources talking to Reuters. He blamed the company, Mojave Research Inc. of trying to circumvent his efforts. An infuriated Olsen said that the company was secretly taking money from George Soros and was part of the "deep state."

Mojave was hired by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to find any vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines in Puerto Rico in the 2024 gubernatorial race.

MS NOW confirmed that Trump bought Olsen's claims about the company being in the "deep state." As president, Trump would technically be the deep state.

Mojave said that the accusation is "absurd and ridiculous" and that the company "opened its books to show it took no money from Soros."

Benen wrote, "If the reporting is accurate, it offers a peek into an extraordinary worldview: When the evidence shows a conspiracy theory is wrong, then the evidence, by definition, must also be wrong — because the conspiracy theory must be right."

The circular reasoning explains that the theory must be correct because all evidence to the contrary is wrong. Under Olsen's claim, if he can't find voter fraud, then it's all part of the cover-up. Given that Trump has tasked Olsen with finding the voter fraud, it leaves him few options if no fraud can be found.

Benen closed by noting that on Thursday, Trump again claimed “they” are finding proof that his 2020 election was “totally rigged."

It's an important reminder that "White House officials are doing a lot more than just saying preposterous things. They're also doing preposterous things," Benen wrote.