The Missouri prosecutor overseeing an investigation into the 2020 vote in Fulton County, Georgia, has participated in meetings since last fall with lawyers charged by President Donald Trump with reinvestigating his loss to Joe Biden.
Thomas Albus, whom Trump appointed last year as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, has held several meetings with top administration lawyers to discuss election integrity.
At these meetings was Ed Martin, a Justice Department attorney who until recently headed an investigative group what the president described as a “weaponization” of the department against him and his allies, according to a source familiar with the meetings who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
White House counsel Kurt Olsen, charged with reviewing the 2020 election, was also ordered to join at least one of the meetings, according to the source. Martin and Olsen worked on behalf of Trump to attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and a federal court sanctioned Olsen for making false statements about the reliability of voting machines in Arizona.
The meetings reveal new details about the length of preparations and who was involved in the January FBI raid in Fulton County, where elections and court proceedings took place. experts told ProPublica This is a significant escalation in Trump’s violation of democratic norms.
United States Attorney General Pam Bondi chose Albus and granted him special authority to handle election-related cases nationwide, although his previous work as a federal prosecutor did not involve election law or election-related cases. The meetings with Martin, Olsen and other Justice Department lawyers were described by the source as being about “election integrity,” a term the Trump administration has used to describe investigations into its false claims that the election was rigged.
Martin, Olsen, Albus and others declined to answer questions about the meetings and other detailed questions from ProPublica. The White House and Justice Department also did not respond to questions.
The meetings took place at a particularly crucial time.
Martin’s efforts to obtain election materials from Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold, hit a wall. In August he sent a letter demanding that a Fulton County judge would allow him access to tens of thousands of absentee ballots for “an election integrity investigation here at the Department of Justice,” but he would not have received any response.
Martin explained to Steve Bannon on a podcast broadcast around the time of the meetings which, although the White House gave Olsen the official mandate to reexamine the 2020 election, “within the DOJ, myself and a few others have also been working on the same subject” – including obtaining Fulton County ballots. But Martin described progress as a “challenge”.
Bannon, who served as Trump’s chief strategist during his first term, questioned why Martin didn’t just “have U.S. marshals come down and seize” the ballots.
Martin suggested that was easier said than done, but he agreed: “Look, we have to get back” the ballots.
Shortly after, Albus and Olsen were questioning witnesses for their case. Kevin Moncla, a conservative researcher, told ProPublica that he spoke to Albus and Olsen several times, together and separately, around the turn of the year. He identified himself as Witness 7 in the affidavit who persuaded a judge to approve the raid, and the affidavit mentions a 263-page report he wrote that activists say could have justified the raid, ProPublica reported. Moncla has a long history to work with Olsen, dating back to an attempt by Kari LakeRepublican candidate for governor of Arizona, to overturn her 2022 defeat.
Just weeks after these interviews, in late January, Albus was on the government’s list of prosecutors. the search warrant which authorized the seizure of approximately 700 boxes of election materials in Georgia, well outside Albus’ usual jurisdiction.
Former U.S. attorneys from both parties said it was rare for a federal prosecutor from one region to take on cases in other states or be granted the national authority granted to Albus.
Under Trump, top positions at the White House, DOJ and FBI have increasingly been filled by a small, interconnected group of Missouri lawyers with long-standing ties to each other.
Another senior federal official present at the meetings was Jesus Osete, the principal assistant attorney general for civil rights. Before joining the Justice Department, Osete worked in the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, where he represented the state in at least five lawsuits against the Biden administration over vaccine mandates, immigration and other policies. Osete did not respond to requests for comment or a detailed list of questions.
When the FBI raided the Fulton County election center, Andrew Bailey, another lawyer from the same political circles, was in charge. Before joining the FBI as deputy director, he had used his position as attorney general of Missouri to pursue high-profile cases against prominent Democrats and said he supported all efforts to investigate Bidenhis family and his administration.
An FBI spokesperson declined to answer detailed questions about Bailey.
Last year, Roger Keller, a veteran federal prosecutor in Albus’ office, was hired to help prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud in Virginia, after the original career prosecutors handling the case were replaced by political appointees. After a judge threw out the case, two federal grand juries declined to re-indict James, and Keller returned to Missouri.
Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, previously served as Missouri’s solicitor general under attorneys general Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt. He and Schmitt signed the Missouri amicus brief supporting efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Sauer later represented Trump in his presidential immunity case, successfully arguing before the Supreme Court that Trump was entitled to broad immunity from prosecution.
Albus’ ties to other Missouri lawyers go back decades. Unlike some others, however, he never held elected office or enjoyed much public prominence, nor did he wage culture war campaigns like Bailey or Martin. Instead, he spent most of his career as a federal prosecutor and circuit court judge in the state of Missouri.
The emails show Albus exchanging brief messages with Martin in 2007, when Albus was an assistant U.S. attorney in St. Louis and Martin was chief of staff for then-Gov. Matt Blunt. The emails were part of Blunt administration documents that became public after being released under Missouri’s Sunshine Law.
In the email exchange, Albus put in a good word for a St. Louis attorney who was a finalist for an appeals court judgeship, and Blunt ultimately selected that candidate.
Albus served as Schmitt’s top aide from early 2019 until Albus was appointed by Gov. Mike Parson to fill a circuit court judge vacancy in early 2020. Schmitt, now a U.S. senator, praised Albus as “one of the best prosecutors I’ve ever met” when approving his appointment for the U.S. Attorney in December.
Attorneys who appeared in court for Albus rated him as well-prepared, professional and attentive, according to Missouri Judicial Performance Ratings. They said he followed the evidence, applied the law correctly and gave clear reasons for his decisions.
Albus faced more critical scrutiny after Trump named him acting U.S. attorney last summer. Much of that attention has focused on a fraud case he inherited when he took office. Prosecutors alleged that St. Louis developers falsely claimed to use minority and women-owned contractors to receive municipal tax breaks, conduct that the Justice Department has historically treated as wire fraud.
One of the defendants was represented by attorney Brad Bondi, Pam Bondi’s brother.
The developers the lawyers argued that even if the government’s claims were true, they were legally irrelevant because the Trump administration had taken the position that tax breaks based on race or gender were illegal. Albus accepted these arguments and abandoned the case. As part of the resolution, Albus personally presented City Hall with a check for approximately $1 million from one of the developers’ companies as restitution. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he intervened “to make it clear” that his office wanted to drop the charges and hand-delivered the check “to make sure they received it.”
In a letter to Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, congressional Democrats said the dismissal of the St. Louis case and other cases in which the Justice Department intervened on behalf of Brad Bondi’s clients raises “broader and more important ethical concerns.” In the St. Louis case, and in a separate case involving another of Brad Bondi’s clients whose charges were dropped, a Justice Department spokesperson said Pam Bondi’s relationship with her brother had “no impact on the result.”
A spokesperson for the developers said their attorneys communicated only with the U.S. attorney’s office in St. Louis about the case and had no direct contact with Pam Bondi. He said the dismissal reflected “a recognition that this case should never have been brought in the first place.” Brad Bondi did not respond to a request for comment.
A few weeks later, at the time of Albus’ meetings on election integrity, he posed with Martin in Martin’s office, flanked by a framed photo of Trump and a copy of “A Choice, Not an Echo,” the influential conservative manifesto of Phyllis Schlafly, claiming Republican voters were being manipulated by party elites and the media.
Martin posted the photo on X with the caption: “Hello, America. How are you?”
