Trump adviser pushed failed plan to ban Dominion machines
- White House adviser pushed Dominion machine ban.
- Proposal sought federal election overhaul.
- Plan collapsed over lack of evidence.
- White House denies coordinated effort.
A White House adviser tasked by US President Donald Trump to investigate widely debunked election-rigging allegations attempted last year to ban voting machines utilized across more than half of the United States.
Kurt Olsen, a lawyer serving as the administration's election-security czar, pushed a plan targeting Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems.
According to sources with direct knowledge of the matter telling Reuters, Olsen sought to have the US Department of Commerce declare components of the machines a national security risk.
The strategy was devised as administration officials brainstormed methods for the federal government to strip state governments of their constitutional authority to run elections, a concept Trump has publicly aired.
Olsen's ultimate goal was to establish a mandatory national system of hand-counted paper ballots.
While proponents argue this eliminates hacking vulnerabilities, election-security experts strongly oppose the idea.
University of Michigan computer science professor Alex Halderman warned that abandoning the current system of electronic readers and auditable paper trails would be highly destabilizing.
“Changing to hand counting would be chaotic,” Halderman stated, “and it might facilitate cheating.”
Push to exclude equipment
The restriction plan advanced far enough that by September, Commerce Department officials began exploring what legal grounds could be invoked to execute it.
Under US supply chain rules, the Commerce Secretary possesses the authority to restrict tech transactions with designated "foreign adversaries," including China, Russia, and Venezuela.
Olsen's team specifically chased a disproved conspiracy theory alleging that Dominion machines were infected with code controlled by the government of Venezuela's former President Nicolas Maduro to steal the 2020 election from Trump.
However, repeated investigations and lawsuits have produced zero evidence of Dominion machines being compromised, culminating in a 2023 case where Fox News paid Dominion $787 million for defamation over false rigging claims.
The operation involved collaboration with Paul McNamara, a senior aide to Trump's spy chief Tulsi Gabbard.
McNamara headed an Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) task force examining voting machine vulnerabilities and, early last summer, formally approached senior officials at Secretary Howard Lutnick’s Commerce Department to propose designating Dominion chips and software as national security threats.
Brian Sikma, a special assistant on Trump's Domestic Policy Council, was also involved in the deliberations.
What leads to collapse?
The push eventually imploded because administration staffers working with Olsen failed to produce any evidence justifying a federal ban.
In May 2025, Olsen helped lead a federal mission that seized Dominion machines used in Puerto Rico’s 2024 gubernatorial election.
Cyber contractor Mojave Research Inc. analyzed the machinery later that summer; while discovering some known vulnerabilities, it found absolutely no evidence of Venezuelan-origin code or hacking.
Furthermore, sources revealed that Olsen's team physically dismantled several Puerto Rico machines expecting to find components from foreign adversaries.
Instead, they discovered one standard chip packaged in China by American firm Intel, alongside other chips packaged in Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia.
To mask the failure to locate genuine national security threats, Olsen’s subsequent report reportedly obscured the findings by generically labeling the components as "East Asian."
Following a tense September White House meeting with National Security Council cyber experts regarding the lack of Venezuelan code, a Commerce Department political appointee made a final request to the department's supply chain risk office to evaluate options against the voting machines.
The office reviewed the matter but chose to take no action, effectively collapsing the initiative.
Midterm anxieties
The disclosure of the plot comes amid broader concerns from Democrats and election-integrity experts that the administration is attempting to suppress voting and lay the groundwork to challenge potential losses in the upcoming November midterm congressional elections.
A parallel investigation also found administration officials and investigators in at least eight states pressing for access to voting equipment, confidential records, and re-examining voter-fraud cases that courts and bipartisan reviews have rejected.
The White House has pushed back against the disclosures, with spokesman Davis Ingle labeling the reporting as misinformation and characterizing it as a selective leak.
From the intelligence side, ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman stated that the agency, including McNamara "did not brief on nor coordinate a plan with the Department of Commerce to take actions to ban Dominion voting machines."
A Commerce Department spokesperson also maintained that Secretary Lutnick never met with McNamara or engaged with the topic at all.
The reports drew fierce condemnation from Democratic lawmakers.
US Senator Alex Padilla published a post on X demanding that Olsen be removed from public service immediately, calling the White House adviser "a threat to democracy."
Kurt Olsen should be fired.
— Senator Alex Padilla (@SenAlexPadilla) May 22, 2026
His sham "investigation" into debunked 2020 election fraud claims — and his dangerous attempts to interfere in the upcoming midterms — are a threat to our democracy.
It’s past time for him to go. https://t.co/2B8aOccz46
Dominion Voting Systems, which was purchased last October by Colorado-based Liberty Vote USA, released a statement bypassing the political friction.
The company noted, "Our total focus remains on working in partnership with our customers... to deliver secure, accessible and transparent elections."
