President Donald Trump abruptly fired Christopher Krebs. Krebs was the director of the federal agency that endorsed the reliability of the 2020 elections. In a tweet, in which Trump said that his recent statement defending the security of the elections was “grossly inaccurate.”
The firing of Krebs, who was appointed by Trump and was director of the Agency for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security, came at a time when Trump refused to acknowledge the victory of Democrat president-elect, Joe Biden. Trump has removed high-ranking officials who he considers are not loyal enough. He fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper on November 9, as part of a broader shakeup in which Trump loyalists assumed high-ranking Pentagon positions.
Krebs, a former Microsoft executive, led the agency from its creation after Russian interference in the 2016 elections until the elections held a few weeks ago. It earned bipartisan praise after the CISA coordinated federal, state and local efforts to defend electoral systems from foreign or national interference. In recent days, Krebs has repeatedly rejected false claims that the elections were tampered with. Yesterday he tweeted a report citing 59 election security experts who noted that there was no clear evidence of computer fraud in the 2020 election results.
Later, Trump responded on Twitter. “Chris Krebs’ recent statement on the security of the 2020 elections was highly inaccurate, as there were massive misstatements and fraud, including dead people who voted, supervisors not authorized to enter polling places, machine failures that changed ballots Trump to Biden, late votes and much more, ” Trump tweeted.
In addition, he listed a series of baseless accusations and forcing Twitter, again, to label his message as “controversial”. Trump wrote that “with immediate effect, Chris Krebs was fired as director of the Agency for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security.”
