As Trump casts doubt on election, new agency contradicts his pitch
WASHINGTON >> Earlier this month, President Donald Trump was predicting on Twitter that this election would be “the most corrupt” in American history. A day later, the head of an obscure government agency he created offered a much different message.
Christopher Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, closed an online conference with a warning about “bad guys, whoever they are,” trying to “sow chaos, sow doubt” about the integrity of the U.S. election.
“I have confidence that your vote is secure, that state and local election officials across this country are working day in and day out, 24/7, that the 2020 election is as secure as possible,” Krebs said.
It was just one of many ways that CISA has been offering a counternarrative as it works behind the scenes to not only help safeguard the election but also to reassure the public despite messages to the contrary from the White House.
That conf lict could be on display on Election Day. Krebs and CISA will be in the national spotlight, monitoring the election amid the inevitable voting glitches and delays, which could be worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, under a president who has said he might not respect the results if he loses.
Krebs warned voters this week to “be prepared for efforts that call into question the legitimacy of the election” without mentioning that it’s the president who has questioned mail-in voting and has called attention to relatively minor incidents in which a small number of ballots had apparently been discarded.
That conflict is all the more notable since CISA was signed into existence by Trump in November 2018 as part of the Department of Homeland Security, which itself has been accused of politicizing its missions under this administration.
Krebs and Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of DHS, spoke to journalists Thursday and said that, with tens of millions of votes already cast, there has been no sign of any foreign interference, unlike in 2016.
Still, there have been attempts to disrupt the election, including a campaign to send threatening emails to voters in several states that CISA and other federal agencies attributed to Iran, and election security is a widespread concern.
“It is true that the defense has gotten better since 2016, but it’s also true that the offense has gotten better still,” said Tom Warrick, a former deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at DHS who is now with the Atlantic Council. “I don’t know of anyone who has absolute confidence that this is all going to go well from an election process standpoint.”
CISA has been largely out of the public eye. It works with the state and local officials who run U. S. elections as well as private companies that supply voting equipment to address cybersecurity and other threats while monitoring balloting and tabulation from a control room at its headquarters near Washington.
Krebs, who with his collar-length hair looks more like a tech executive than a senior Trump administration official, also keeps a low profile. His carefully calibrated remarks at government or cybersecurity conferences rarely make major headlines.
That has helped him avoid the wrath that Trump has directed at FBI Director Chris Wray for saying there was little evidence of fraud with mail-in balloting, among other things.
Krebs should be praised for “staying focused on the mission and not getting caught up in the fray,” said Kiersten Todt, managing director of the nonprofit Cyber Readiness Institute.
“The importance of him staying in this job certainly through elections is pretty critical, and I think he feels that, too,” she said.