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Donald Trump fired the director of the federal agency that ensured the reliability of the 2020 elections and rejected the president’s baseless claims of voter fraud.
Trump fired Christopher Krebs, who served as director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa), in a tweet Tuesday, saying Krebs “has been fired” and that his recent statement advocating election security was “very inaccurate.”
The Trump-appointed firing of Krebs comes as Trump refuses to acknowledge the victory of President-elect Joe Biden and fires high-level officials deemed insufficiently loyal. He fired Mark Esper, the defense secretary, on November 9 as part of a broader shakeup that put Trump loyalists in high positions in the Pentagon.
Krebs had indicated that he expected to be fired. Last week, his agency issued a statement refuting the allegations of widespread electoral fraud. “The November 3 elections were the safest in the history of the United States,” the statement said. “There is no evidence that any voting system has removed or lost votes, changed votes or been compromised in any way.”
Krebs, a former Microsoft executive, led the agency, known as Cisa, from its inception in the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 election until the November election. He earned bipartisan praise when Cisa coordinated federal state and local efforts to defend electoral systems from domestic or foreign interference.
Trump mentioned the Cisa statement in its cheep firing Krebs. The president’s tweets also echo many of the baseless claims of voter fraud he has made in recent weeks.
Several top Democrats were quick to condemn the president’s decision to fire Krebs.
On CNN, Delaware Senator Chris Coons said: “Chris Krebs’ federal service is just the latest casualty in President Trump’s four-year war against the truth.”
Angus King, the Maine senator who is among the candidates who can be named Director of National Intelligence in the next Biden administration, called Krebs “A dedicated public servant who has helped develop new cyber capabilities in the face of rapidly evolving dangers.
“By firing him for doing his job, President Trump is hurting all Americans.”
Adam Schiff, the Democratic congressman from California who chairs the House intelligence committee, said Trump’s move is “Pathetic and predictable of a president who sees the truth as his enemy.”
And Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia and co-chair of the Senate cybersecurity group, said that Krebs “is an extraordinary public servant and exactly the person that Americans want to protect the security of our elections.”
“It says a lot that the president decided to fire him simply for telling the truth,” he said, echoing many of his Democratic colleagues.
Ben Sasse, a Republican senator from Nebraska also intervened. “Chris Krebs did a very good job,” he said. “Obviously, he shouldn’t be fired.”
Two other DHS officials, Bryan Ware, Cisa’s deputy director of international affairs, and Valerie Boyd, DHS undersecretary of international affairs, were also expelled last week.
Krebs tweeted from his personal account that he was “honored to serve”.
Twitter quickly flagged tweets in which the president announced Krebs’ firing for containing “controversial” claims about the election.
Unwilling to accept reality and concede the election, Trump has doubled down on conspiracy theories about voter fraud. His administration has blocked Biden’s transition team from receiving reports, but now that Krebs is no longer working in an official capacity, the incoming administration may obtain unclassified reports from the former cybersecurity official.
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