Trump Fires US Cybersecurity Director Chris Krebs After Krebs Debunks Trump's Claims Of Election Systems Fraud
from the mad-king-tantrum dept
As we noted last week, it was widely expected that sooner or later Donald Trump would turn his post-election temper tantrum towards Chris Krebs, the widely respected director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Krebs had been standing firm in reporting that there was no evidence to support the widespread conspiracy theories about hacked voting machines. CISA had been proactively debunking these claims.
On Tuesday morning, Krebs tweeted about how election security experts all agreed that there was no evidence of manipulated elections -- directly contradicting the ongoing unsubstantiated claims of the President and his enablers:
ICYMI: On allegations that election systems were manipulated, 59 election security experts all agree, "in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent." #Protect2020 https://t.co/Oj6NciYruD
— Chris Krebs #Protect2020 (@CISAKrebs) November 17, 2020
In response, a few hours later, Trump tweeted that Krebs was fired:
If you can't read that, it's the President saying:
The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud - including dead people voting, Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, “glitches” in the voting machines which changed... votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more. Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
There is no evidence that any of that actually happened. None. Zero. Zilch. Every single one of those stories has been debunked (and most of them have literally nothing to do with Krebs' job). The only thing truthful in those tweets is that Trump was firing Krebs. This is a disgusting abuse of power, supporting completely bullshit conspiracy theory nonsense, in order to remove a public servant who actually did his job well in protecting against such election manipulation.
Moments later, on his personal Twitter account, Krebs tweeted with class:
Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomrorow. #Protect2020
— Chris Krebs (@C_C_Krebs) November 18, 2020
This is the kind of grace and class that Trump and his enablers will never understand.
As professor Steve Vladeck notes, "we're worse off as a country" because of "this temper tantrum" by the President.
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Filed Under: chris krebs, cisa, dhs, donald trump, election security, fired, tempter tantrum
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Re:
While true, the silver lining is that a lot of it's reversible. It will take some time for the US to regain any credit on the world stage, as we all got burned after naively thinking that getting rid of Bush's cronies would be the end of it.
But, if you look at what Trump has done, and it's easy to repair some of the worst of the rot. He did a lot of stuff via executive order, which means that it's easily reversed by more executive orders. Since much of it wasn't voted on by congress, there's no need for a vote to change it. His staffing has consisted largely of installing family and political donors who were woefully unqualified for their jobs, while leaving other important roles completely unfilled.
In theory, at least, Biden can do a lot of good simply by kicking those people out and installing people who are qualified. Hell, all he has to do is employ people who are not fundamentally opposed to the departments he put them in charge of, and things should start to improve.
It's a long, probably hard, road ahead and it's going to be painful just to stop the slaughter of citizens that he's been promoting this year, let alone repair the damage that has come elsewhere. But, since Trump is not a competent fascist, there's more hope than there may have been.
We can probably start with this role here. Krebs was apparently unusual in that he was a competent, talented, non-partisan figure who knew what he was doing and was respected in his role and fired purely for doing his job properly, so there's no reason he wouldn't be considered again. If firing him has caused any damage, all he should have to do is enjoy the holiday break, accept his reinstation on January 21st, and carry on as he was.
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