Trump fires cyberchief who validated vote
President Donald Trump on Tuesday fired the directorof the federal agency that vouchedfor there liability of the 2020 election.
Trump fired Christopher Krebs in a tweet, saying his recent statement defending the security of the election was “highly inaccurate.”
While abrupt, the dismissal was hardly surprising. Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, had offered a stream of statements and tweets over the past week attesting to the integrity of the election, directly contradicting Trump’s assertions of widespread fraud without mentioning the president by name.
The firing of Krebs, a Trump appointee, comes as Trump is refusing to recognize the victory of Democratic President-elect Joe Biden and removing high-level officials seen as insufficiently loyal. He fired Defense Secretary Mark Es per on Nov .9, part of a broader shakeup that put Trump loyalists in senior Pentagon positions.
A former Microsoft executive,
Krebs ran the agency, known as CISA, from its creation in the wake of Russian interference with the 2016 election through the November election. He won bipartisan praise as CISA coordinated federal state and local efforts to defend electoral systems from foreign or domestic interference.
Krebs repeatedly has pushed back against false claims that the election was tainted. Earlier Tuesday, he tweeted that “59 election security experts all agree, ‘in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.’ ”
Trump fired back on Twitter later in the day. He repeated unsubstantiated claims about the vote and wrote “effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.”
Krebs, from his personal Twitter account, responded: “Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomorrow.“He closed with the phrase “Protect 2020,” which had been his agency’s slogan ahead
of the election.
Officials with CISA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, had no immediate comment.
In other election news Tuesday: •Michigan’ s largest county reversed course and unanimously certified its presidential election results after Republicans first blocked the move in a party-line vote that threatened to temporarily stall official approval of Biden’s win in the state.
The Wayne County Board of Canvassers acted after the 2-2 tie was condemned by Democrats, election experts and the meeting’s online spectators as adangerous attemptto overthrow the will of voters.
The board met after days of unsuccessful litigation filed by Republican poll challengers and Trump’s allies. They claimed fraud during absentee ballot counting at a Detroit convention center, but two judges found no evidence and refused to stop the canvassing process.
Biden crushed Trump in Wayne County, a Democratic stronghold, by more than a 2-1 margin and won the state by 146,000 votes, according to unofficial results.
The canvassers first rejected certification of the Detroit-area vote with the tie. Monica Palmer, a Republican, said poll books in certain Detroit precincts were out of balance. In response, Democrat Jonathan Kinloch said it was “reckless and irresponsible” not to certify the results.
“It’s not based upon fraud. It’s absolutely human error,” Kinloch said of any discrepancies.
The board then listened to a parade of spectators blasting Palmer and fellow Republican William Hartmann during the meeting’ s public comment period over Zoom before the unanimous revote.
• Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger defended himself after Trump spent the weekend attacking him on social media, saying he didn’t do enough to root out cheating by Democrats in the election and at one point calling him a RINO, an acronym for “Republican in name only.”
Raffensperger, who describes himself as a lifelong conservative Republican, insisted he’s an impartial administrator of Georgia elections with no desire to sway the outcome.
He also said South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called him in an apparent effort to pressure him to improperly discard legal ballots. Graham dismissed the allegation as “ridiculous.”
Also Tuesday, a second Georgia county uncovered a trove of votes not previously included in election results.
A memory card that hadn’t been uploaded in Fayette County, just south of Atlanta, was discovered during a hand tally of the votes. But Biden still will lead by about 13,000 votes when all votes are accounted for, Raffensperger’s office said.