The well-respected head of a US government cybersecurity agency has been fired by Donald Trump after confirming the Presidential election was free, fair and secure.
As rumored last week and reported by Infosecurity, Christopher Krebs was on Tuesday “terminated” via a tweet from the White House, Trump’s increasingly favored way of dealing with high ranking government officials who displease him.
In it, the outgoing President repeated baseless allegations of voter fraud in the election, prompting Twitter to once again label his tweets with a warning label indicating possible misinformation.
In response, Krebs tweeted simply: “Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomorrow.”
Trump’s ire seems to have been drawn by a recent statement from Krebs’s former employer, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and various election infrastructure agencies, that the November 3 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,” it continued.
This official undermining of Trump’s narrative from the bodies whose job it is to monitor the election, proved too much for the President to take. CISA also runs a Rumor Control website to debunk mis- and disinformation circulating about the elections – many of which were promoted by Trump himself and supporters.
Although Krebs was a rare Trump appointee when he joined CISA as someone who enjoyed bipartisan support, there were no Republican lawmakers to speak out in support of his service.
However, Democrat senator and vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, stepped up.
“Chris Krebs is an extraordinary public servant and exactly the person Americans want protecting the security of our elections,” he tweeted. “It speaks volumes that the President chose to fire him simply for telling the truth.”