Lame Duck: Trump Fired Director of Cyber Security at DHS

Following a historic Presidental election in which President-elect Biden crushed Trump, Smart Dissent took three weeks off from new posts after not taking a week off since February 2017.  We're back with new additions to our database because Trump and Republicans continue to undermine our nation on their way out.  We hope to not need to add nearly as much as we get into 2021 but will post as needed.

With that in mind, let's look back to 11/18/20:

Trump on Tuesday fired the Department of Homeland Security official who had rejected Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud.

Trump announced on Twitter he was firing Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and directly tied it to Krebs' statement that said there "is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."

"The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud," Trump said in a tweet that also repeated other baseless conspiracy theories about the election and was flagged by Twitter as "disputed."

 To be clear, Trump said IN WRITING he was firing Krebs for not bowing down to him.

Krebs, who ran the cyber arm of the Department of Homeland Security.... knew he might get in trouble for telling the truth.... He.... responded on Twitter himself shortly afterward, saying, "Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomrorow. #Protect2020."

Krebs was responsible for a widely praised revamp of the department's cybersecurity efforts and increasing coordination with state and local governments, as the first director of CISA.  He served as one of the most key federal national security officials that oversaw an election that by all accounts went very smoothly.

CISA Deputy Director Matt Travis, the No. 2 official at the agency, resigned in the wake of Krebs' firing....  Former DHS general counsel John Mitnick, also blasted Krebs' firing as "outrageous but not surprising."

Krebs has become active on Twitter in recent weeks and is a new must-follow.

In the lead-up to the election, Krebs had often quietly disputed the President's repeated false claims about mail-in ballots but went out of his way to not get drawn into criticizing his boss for spreading lies.

But in the days that have followed, Krebs has adopted a more forceful approach regularly posting on Twitter -- often with blaring red siren emojis -- fact checks of the claims and conspiracy theories being pushed by Trump, his allies and supporters around the country.

 

 

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/17/politics/chris-krebs-fired-by-trump/index.html

Date: 
Tuesday, December 1, 2020