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After refusing to certify President Donald Trump's ongoing claims of widespread voter fraud in the U.S. presidential elections, the head of the U.S. cybersecurity agency, Christopher Krebs, was terminated from his position.
Krebs, who served as the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, was terminated from his position Tuesday after vouching for the recent U.S. presidential elections' reliability, pushing back on the president's baseless claims of voter fraud.
In a tweet, Trump said that Krebs "has been terminated" and that his recent statements defending the security of the elections were "highly inaccurate."
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Krebs' firing is the most recent in a string of dismissals by Trump in the intelligence, military, and national security sectors. Trump recently fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, on November 9, as well as the heads of Defense policy and intelligence, because these officials were not seen as sufficiently loyal to Trump's post-electoral intentions.
A former Microsoft executive who ran the agency known as Cisa, Krebs has been in his role since 2016 when he won bipartisan praise for coordinating federal, state and local and local efforts to defend electoral systems from domestic and foreign interference.
Last week, Krebs' agency released a statement assuring that "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Christopher Krebs got fired because he did his job to protect our elections and stood up to Trump's conspiracy theories. This is a disgusting abuse of power by a weak and desperate President who undermines our democracy and national security. https://t.co/T6MTiNfvbs
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) November 18, 2020
Several top Democrats quickly condemned the President's decision to fire Krebs. For example, Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said: "Chris Krebs’ federal service is just the latest casualty in President Trump’s four-year-long war on the truth.”
Adam Schiff, a Democratic California congressman, and the House intelligence committee chair called Trump’s move a “pathetic and predictable from a president who views truth as his enemy."
Two other officials from the Department of Homeland Security, Bryan Ware, Cisa’s assistant director of international affairs, and Valerie Boyd, DHS assistant secretary of international affairs, were also forced out of their positions last week.
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