Chris Krebs CISA

ntbcw brian

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4 25 target retaliation see lie gaslight

experts say most cyber secure ever, so trump want to fire head guy

he was a republican

fired by trump:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/chris-krebs-2648968731/}:

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PP

Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, has been appointed to a senior position in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in which she’ll help oversee the nation’s election infrastructure.

Honey is a protege of Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election results. In 2024, ProPublica reported that Honey had played a key role in Mitchell’s behind-the-scenes effort to change Georgia’s election rules to allow Republican officials to contest a potential Trump loss in that year’s presidential race. Honey also promoted election conspiracy theories, including one Trump cited in a speech to his followers before they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Though states do the on-the-ground work of running elections, DHS supports them with tasks beyond their capacities, such as protecting IT infrastructure and voter databases from foreign intrusions. The agency, with bipartisan support, took on this role in the aftermath of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Experts on voting and state election officials warned that Honey’s appointment as DHS’ deputy assistant secretary of election integrity could erode trust between state and federal officials, prompting states not to share information with the agency.

“We are witnessing a dangerous trend: the elevation of known bad-faith actors like Heather Honey,” said Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, in a statement, citing Honey’s “well-documented history of spreading election lies that have been debunked in court.”

Fontes called her involvement with DHS “deeply troubling” and said “when the agency gives a platform to individuals who have actively worked to erode public trust, it becomes harder to view DHS as a reliable partner in election security.”

A DHS spokesperson did not answer questions from ProPublica on Honey’s appointment or the exact nature of her responsibilities. Honey didn’t respond to calls or emails. The White House also didn’t respond to a request for comment. Her name is listed on the organization’s leadership structure online, and her appointment was first reported by the website Democracy Docket.

In the first Trump administration, the federal government set up programs designed to shield U.S. elections from foreign interference, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of DHS. But Trump soured on this and other initiatives after the director of CISA publicly rebutted his claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Since the start of the second Trump presidency, the administration has gutted those programs, cutting hundreds of employees at CISA. Its director, Chris Krebs, is now under federal investigation, DHS has said; Krebs told CNN that the investigation appeared to be an act of political retribution. The Justice Department has also rolled back a program aimed at combatting foreign influence campaigns. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a memorandum that the Justice Department’s program was disbanded to “free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion.”

David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit focused on building trust in American elections, said the cuts had dismantled “nearly all” of DHS’ capacity to protect election infrastructure. He said state elections officials feared that Honey’s appointment, combined with the program cuts, signaled the Trump administration’s intent to eliminate bulwarks of fair U.S. elections.

“The hiring of an election conspiracy theorist with no election knowledge or expertise is the culmination of this reversal,” Becker said. “DHS now appears poised to become a primary amplifier of false election conspiracies pushed by our enemies.”

Two sources familiar with Honey’s hiring at DHS said she began working for the agency last week. An organizational chart dated Aug. 18 on the department’s website identifies her as a leader in the agency’s Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans. Her position wasn’t on a version of the website archived in July, and officials in former administrations said that there’s been no such job previously.

It’s not clear yet what Honey will oversee, but former DHS officials said that deputy assistant secretaries are typically the agency’s top experts in their subject areas. They’re often involved in drafting executive orders and crafting policies. They also serve as liaisons to the White House and the National Security Council.

Since Honey started, Trump has announced “a movement to get rid of” mail-in ballots and voting machines via executive order, though a top aide subsequently said the administration would pursue those goals through legislative action. DHS has also threatened to cut off about $28 million in grants to help states prepare for terrorism and disasters if they don’t change voting rules to conform to the administration’s priorities, NPR has reported.

Honey’s duties likely would include helping to organize the government’s policy responses if foreign actors make intrusions into the nation’s election systems, former officials said. To do this, and to assess the security of election infrastructure, someone in her position would typically have access to classified information, including the government’s election-related intelligence.

Experts expressed concern about Honey’s portfolio, given her history of spreading misinformation.

“Heather Honey’s past misleading claims about vote counts in Pennsylvania, among other things, have helped fuel false conspiracy theories about stolen elections,” said Larry Norden, an election expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, a nonpartisan law and policy group.

Before becoming swept up in the “Stop the Steal” movement, Honey had no experience in the federal government or as an election administrator, working as a Pennsylvania-based private investigator.

Amid Rise of RFK Jr., Officials Waver on Drinking Water Fluoridation — Even in the State Where It Started](https://www.propublica.org/article/fluoride-drinking-water-rfk-jr-michigan-cdc-hhs)

After the 2020 election, she became a contractor for a Republican-backed audit seeking proof of fraud in ballots cast in Maricopa County, Arizona. According to emails between employees working on the review, which ended up reaffirming Biden’s win, Honey helped draft the final report.

Since then, Honey has led at least three organizations devoted to transforming election systems in ways championed by conservatives, such as tightening eligibility requirements for people to be on voter rolls. Members of Honey’s Pennsylvania Fair Elections, a state chapter of Mitchell’s nationwide Election Integrity Network, have challenged the eligibility of thousands of residents to be on voter rolls.

Honey has also been involved in numerous other efforts to transform elections around the country, including a successful push to get many states with Republican leadership to pull out of a bipartisan interstate partnership to share data to make voting more secure.

Do you have information you can share about Heather Honey or elections work being done in the federal government, especially at the Department of Homeland Security? Contact reporter Doug Bock Clark at doug.clark@propublica.org or on Signal at 678-243-0784. If you’re concerned about confidentiality, check out our advice on the most secure ways to share tips.

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GGL 10 25

Democracy Docket

Cleta Mitchell Thinks Trump Will Use Emergency Powers to Take Control of Elections

Cleta Mitchell Thinks Trump Will Use Emergency Powers to Take Control of Elections ... Cleta Mitchell thinks President Donald Trump may declare a...

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1 month ago

Democracy Docket

Plaintiffs Want Cleta Mitchell to Testify on Law to Suppress Student Voting

Voting rights groups in North Carolina are asking a federal court to compel election-denying lawyer Cleta Mitchell to testify in their...

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2 weeks ago

Carolina Journal

Critics ask court to compel election integrity activist Mitchell to testify at NC trial

Left-of-center groups challenging a provision of North Carolina election law are asking a federal judge to help them ensure election...

.

2 weeks ago

MSNBC News

Researcher who distorted voter data gets election integrity job in Trump’s second term

For those who followed Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, Cleta Mitchell's name probably rings a bell.

.

1 month ago

CBS News

Can Trump use emergency powers to influence federal elections?

Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who played a role in President Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election, said Mr. Trump could declare a...

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1 month ago

NPR

Despite Trump's win, 'election integrity' activists still seek sweeping voting changes

Republican voters say they trust the 2024 election was administered well, yet pro-Trump conservatives are pushing some sweeping reforms to...

.

Jan 13, 2025

ProPublica

She Pushed to Overturn Trump’s Loss in the 2020 Election. Now She’ll Help Oversee U.S. Election Security.

Heather Honey has been appointed to a senior position in the Department of Homeland Security. State election officials and voting experts...

.

1 month ago

The Guardian

She was a firebrand Democrat. Now, Cleta Mitchell is a rising star of Republican election denialism | Donald Trump

Mitchell is now one of the most influential Republicans working to shape election law and policy ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

.

Jul 2, 2024

EXPOSEDbyCMD

Cleta Mitchell’s New Dark Money Elections Group Raised $3.9 Million in Its First Full Year of Operations

The pro-Trump outlet also published a column EIN's Kerri Toloczko misinforming readers that noncitizen voting is a crisis that needs to be...

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OOPS CONTEXT

nbc?

:{July 9, 2025

By Ken Dilanian, Ryan J. Reilly and Dan De Luce

The Trump administration has put two repeated targets of President Donald Trump under criminal investigation, although details of what exactly they are being investigated for or how far the Justice Department intends on taking the probes are unclear.

The two targets are former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in his first term, according to a statement that a Justice Department spokesperson provided to reporters.

The statement followed a Fox News article on Tuesday evening reporting on the existence of the investigations. After referring to Comey and Brennan, the spokesperson said the Justice Department does "not comment on ongoing investigations.”

A lawyer for Comey had no comment. Brennan, who is a paid contributor to NBC News and MSNBC, said he has not been contacted by the Justice Department or the CIA about the reported investigation. The FBI declined to comment.

The Fox News article was published as both FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi are facing significant blowback from conservative media and influencers over their handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and material related to it. This week, the Justice Department and the FBI put out a memo restating what prior investigations had already found: that Epstein, a convicted sex offender and financier, killed himself in his jail cell in 2019 and that there was no incriminating evidence against uncharged third parties.

Patel, before joining the government, engaged with conspiracy theories about Epstein, while a statement from Bondi that an Epstein "client list" was sitting on her desk fueled more speculation on the right. Bondi later said she was speaking about documents related to Epstein, not an actual list.

U.S. newsVirginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin says his family was rescued in Texas floods

As for Brennan, a source briefed on the matter said CIA Director John Ratcliffe had made a criminal referral of Brennan to the Justice Department. Exactly what prompted the Comey investigation is unclear.

Ratcliffe last week released an internal CIA review that criticized Brennan’s handling of a 2017 intelligence assessment concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Any conduct that took place during that campaign or even in most of Trump’s first term is now outside the typical five-year statute of limitations for federal crimes. The Fox News article mentions testimony that Brennan gave to the House Judiciary Committee in May 2023 about the so-called Steele Dossier that was an issue during the 2016 campaign. It cites no specific conduct from Comey during the past five years.

A special counsel appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr spent years investigating how the 2017 intelligence assessment was put together, requiring many CIA officials to hire lawyers. That special counsel, John Durham, also used a grand jury to scrutinize the actions of Brennan, Comey and many who worked for them over how the FBI and CIA handled investigations into Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election. But Durham did not charge the two former leaders or accuse them of wrongdoing. His sole charge against a public official came against a low-level FBI lawyer who had lied on a warrant application.

The Trump administration has been taking action against people involved in investigations of the president and his supporters. The Justice Department has a "Weaponization Working Group" that is examining those investigations, and many who worked on them and were still in the department have been fired. And on his first day in office, Trump pardoned his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

ED FUCKING MARTIN JARED WISE EX FBI

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AN 5 25

During President Donald Trump’s first three months in office, his administration has targeted dozens of former officials who criticized him or opposed his agenda.

In April 2025, Trump directed the Department of Justice to investigate two men who served in his first administration, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, because they spoke out against his policies and corrected his false claims about the 2020 election that he lost.

Further, Trump revoked the security clearances for advisers and retired generals who publicly criticized him during the 2024 election campaign.

On their face, such moves appear to be a coordinated campaign of personal retribution. But as political science scholars who study the origins of elected strongmen, we believe Trump’s use of the Justice Department to attack former officials who stood up to him isn’t just about revenge. It also deters current officials from defying Trump.

More than revenge

Like all presidents, Trump needs allies who will faithfully implement his policy agenda. For most presidents, this means surrounding themselves with longtime friends.

For example, Don Evans, George W. Bush’s commerce secretary and close confidant, worked with Bush for decades before becoming a fixture in his White House.

But to carry out a power grab, incumbent leaders also need allies who will stay silent or, better yet, endorse their attempts to consolidate control.

In El Salvador, for example, President Nayib Bukele’s legislative allies gave him free rein in 2023 to run for president a second time despite constitutional provisions banning reelection.

Recall that Trump only left office in January 2021 because key Republican officials defied his attempts to overturn an election he lost.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, facing violent threats from a Trump-fueled mob, refused Trump’s request to overturn the election he lost. And Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refused Trump’s entreaties to stuff the ballot boxes in Georgia with another 11,000 votes for Trump.Images

Notably, both men first won political office on their own, without an endorsement from Trump. This means they were less reliant on Trump for access to political power. Therefore, they were more likely to prioritize their loyalty to the Constitution over their loyalty to Trump.

Attacks enforce loyalty

In authoritarian contexts, loyalty is not an intrinsic quality. Authoritarian leaders do not necessarily select those with whom they have long work experience that leads to mutual trust.

For instance, during Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961, the head of intelligence, Johnny Abbes, was plucked from obscurity in Mexico and in 1958 began to lead the dictator’s repression machine.

Instead, the challenge for authoritarian leaders is finding people to do their bidding. And the best people for this job are those who never would have earned their position in politics without the leader’s influence.

Unqualified appointees who can’t ascend to political power based on their merits have little choice but to stick with the leader. These people appear loyal, but only because their careers are tied to the leader staying in power.

A litany of failed politicians

This logic, where people with few career prospects outside of the leader express the most loyalty, explains why Trump has appointed a number of political candidates who have lost elections.

The head of the Small Business Administration, Kelly Loeffler, though briefly appointed as a U.S. senator from Georgia, lost her first Senate election to Raphael Warnock in 2021.

Doug Collins, Trump’s secretary of Veterans Affairs, lost to Loeffler in a Georgia Senate primary during the same election cycle.

Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, lost a 2016 primary contest for a congressional seat in a heavily Republican district in Florida.

And don’t forget Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s nominee to head a politically crucial federal judicial office. Her political career derailed 20 years ago when she came under federal investigation for “scheming to catch a cheating spouse in the act.” She lost an attorney general race in New York in 2006 to Andrew Cuomo.

Trump also picked two politicians who had failed presidential runs as Democrats – Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – to act as director of national intelligence and secretary of Health and Human Services.

For appointees who can’t win elections, the only shot at power is steadfast alignment with the leader. This dynamic, in turn, provides a strong incentive for these officials to remain loyal, even when the leader breaks the law or orders them to do the same.

When leaders place loyalists in charge of federal law enforcement, attempts to conjure votes for the president out of thin air or to seize ballot boxes in opposition districts are more likely to succeed.

The Trump administration’s attacks on former Republican officials who criticized him, such as Taylor and Krebs, reinforces this dynamic. It sends a signal of future punishment to current Justice Department officials should they speak out against Trump or refuse to carry out illegal orders.

Attacks also target opposition power

Of course, the Trump administration’s political attacks haven’t stopped with officials in his previous administration who have fallen out of favor.

They have expanded to include independent institutions such as universities, not-for-profit media and law firms.

As research on authoritarian regimes shows, the goal of attacking independent institutions this way is to sap their capacity to resist the incumbent government’s attempts to cheat in future elections.

After Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orban, had rewritten his country’s Constitution and reined in the courts, he changed the electoral rules to ensure he won reelection in 2022. Along the way, Orban forced an entire university into exile after failing to subdue it.

In these ways, incumbents’ acts of retribution toward people and organizations that oppose their agenda reinforce loyalty among their allies. They also undermine and weaken their opponents and ultimately facilitate incumbents’ efforts to consolidate power.

Joe Wright, Professor of Political Science, Penn State and Erica Frantz, Associate Professor of Political Science, Michigan State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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an 4 25

One man personally targeted by President Donald Trump who worked for him in his previous administration is now pledging to fight back against his retribution campaign — and has just quit his job to do it.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Christopher Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) during Trump's first term, is putting together a strategic campaign to fight back against his former boss. Krebs' announcement comes after Trump specifically named him and Miles Taylor — who was a senior Department of Homeland Security official during Trump's first term — in an executive order that demanded they be investigated and be stripped of their security clearances.

According to Krebs, he felt the need to step away from SentinelOne (the cybersecurity firm where he works) so his employer wouldn't experience direct blowback from his efforts to battle against Trump's retribution. He said he felt compelled to do something "about the government pulling its levers to punish dissent, to go after corporate interests and corporate relationships." And he added that he didn't think the "lay-low-and-hope-this-blows-over approach is the right one for the moment we’re in."

READ MORE:'Not going to flinch': Expert predicts Supreme Court will hand Trump another 9-0 loss

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“For those who know me, you know I don’t shy away from tough fights,” Krebs wrote in an email to coworkers. “But I also know this is one I need to take on fully — outside of SentinelOne.”

Trump fired Krebs via Twitter in 2020 after the former CISA director refused to endorse his false claims that his election loss to then-candidate Joe Biden was illegitimate. Krebs not only validated Biden's victory as fair, but even said that the 2020 election was the most secure in history. Trump derisively referred to Krebs as a "wiseguy" from the Oval Office.

"He came out right after the election, which was a rigged election, a badly rigged election…this guy Krebs was saying, ‘Oh, the election was great, it was great,'" Trump said prior to signing the order.

Taylor, in the meantime, has also promised to fight back against the Trump administration. He told the Journal that he felt compelled to do so in order to establish that Trump's "punishment for dissent" shouldn't go unchallenged.

READ MORE:'Cannot and will not support': 12 Republicans just dealt a blow to Johnson's budget bill

Click here to read the Journal's report in full (subscription required).

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cowed by jordan maga mike miller am 1st legaL ATTACKS?!

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an 4 25

Attorney General Pam Bondi just made a significant escalation in the feud between President Donald Trump's administration and the federal judiciary — and she's hoping to enlist the Supreme Court to the White House's side.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Bondi made it clear she didn't appreciate having to abide by a lower court order in a memorandum sent to various heads of federal agencies. The memo was written as part of an order from U.S. District Judge John D. Bates (an appointee of former President George W. Bush) instructing Bondi and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to tell agencies they were prohibited from implementing parts of an executive order Trump handed down targeting the law firm Jenner & Block.

In Trump's initial executive order, he prohibited the firm's attorneys from entering government buildings (a virtual impossibility for lawyers who practice in Washington D.C.), stripped attorneys of security clearances and imposed various other sanctions. The Janner & Block executive order is part of a pattern of other related orders explicitly targeting law firms that worked for Trump's political opponents.

READ MORE:'The gun was at his head': Here's why Trump really 'capitulated' to market pressure

The attorney general didn't mince words for the "unelected" judge who authored the decision, which she said "invaded the policy-making and free speech prerogatives of the executive branch." She also notably expressed hope that the Supreme Court would step in and explicitly allow the administration to sidestep lower courts.

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"Local district judges lack this authority, and the Supreme Court should swiftly constrain these judges’ blatant overstepping of the judicial power," Bondi wrote.

While some law firms cut deals with the administration in order to roll back his orders, other firms — like Janner & Block — sued to prevent the orders from going into effect. Janner & Block was one of three firms that found success in their litigation against the White House. WilmerHale and Perkins Coie were also targeted and successfully fought back in the courts.

Bondi's memo comes as the Trump administration has repeatedly attempted to ignore orders from federal judges striking down Trump's policies and enlist the High Court in its fight. When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the return of an immigrant the administration admitted was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, the administration appealed to the Supreme Court. The 6-3 conservative supermajority halted the deadline imposed by Boasberg to bring the man back to the United States, and allowed the administration to continue deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

NOW READ:Donald Trump's new policies are 'stupid' — according to stupidity researchers

Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).

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4 25 politico

by Adam Cancryn, Maggie Miller, James Romoser and Kyle Cheney

04/09/2025

President Donald Trump is targeting two former first-term appointees over their criticism of his actions, stripping their security clearances and opening federal probes of their tenures.

The directives that Trump signed on Wednesday order the Justice Department to scrutinize Chris Krebs, who ran Trump’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and former senior Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor.

The two critics are the latest to be swept up in Trump’s expansive retribution campaign, where he’s sought to use federal powers in unprecedented ways to punish political opponents, law firms, universities and others that he believes have wronged him.

A president ordering investigations of specific individuals whom he considers to be his political enemies is a remarkable breach of the traditional wall of separation between the White House and the Justice Department. Under that norm of separation, criminal investigations are supposed to be insulated from political pressure, but Trump has repeatedly scorned the notion of DOJ independence. Making Wednesday’s action even more remarkable, and perhaps unprecedented, is that Trump used the formal power of executive orders to effectively brand two individuals as subjects of criminal investigations.

Krebs, who was the administration’s top cybersecurity official responsible for election security, wasfired by Trump via tweet after he had asserted shortly after President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 that “in every case of which we are aware, these claims [of fraud] either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” He had also authorized a joint statementby CISA and other stakeholder groups that said the election was secure and that there was no indication of votes being changed or stolen, which angered Trump.

He was also akey witness for the Jan. 6 select committee, describing his efforts to secure the 2020 election and rebut conspiracy theories about the election and shore up voters’ confidence in the results. In his interview, he lamented that Republican leaders had catered to the false notion that the election was stolen, creating a “self-reinforcing cycle” of doubt. “Republican officials, senior officials, including the former President, lied to the American people about the security of the 2020 election,” he told the panel.

The order signed by Trump labeled Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority.” As he signed the order on Wednesday stripping Krebs’ security clearance and opening an investigation into his activities, Trump repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged.”

“It was proven by so many different ways in so many different forms,” Trump said. “We’re going to find out about this guy too, because this guy is a wise guy.”

Krebs is currently the chief intelligence and public policy officer at cybersecurity company SentinelOne. The order signed by Trump also takes aim at his current colleagues, suspending any security clearances held by individuals at SentinelOne who work with Krebs.

A spokesperson for the company did not immediately respond to request for comment.

In another move stemming from Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election, the president on Wednesday signed a separate order imposing new limits on the law firm Susman Godfrey. The firm represented voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani and other Trump associates who falsely claimed the election was rigged.

Taylor authored a high-profile anonymous op-ed in 2018 that criticized Trump and offered a scathing firsthand account of his decision-making. He later authored a book portraying the chaos inside the Trump White House, before revealing his identity and endorsing then-candidate Biden in the days before the 2020 election.

Trump on Wednesday called Taylor a “traitor,” even as he insisted that the former DHS chief of staff played a minimal role in his first administration.

“I barely remember him. Somebody that went out and wrote a book and said all sorts of terrible things that were all lies,” Trump said in the Oval Office Wednesday. “I think he’s guilty of treason.”

Taylor left the Trump administration in 2019. On Wednesday, Taylor said Trump’s decision to target him was a sign the country was headed down “a dark path.”

“I said this would happen,”he posted on X. “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”

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MMA

April 9, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports

GREG KELLY (HOST): He may have divulged classified information. It's — you can't have that. It's very hard to govern when you may be surrounded by people who could turn around and write a book or a column that does tremendous damage, especially when it's false.

All right, on to the other guy. CISA, he headed CISA, this strange organization. And right after the 2020 election, which, let's face it, was controversial and a disputed election — like days later, they say, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too. Well, it wasn't up to CISA, all right, to put something like that out. And this guy Krebs, who said that, deeply suspect and he should be investigated. I felt at the time I thought he was way out of line. You can't say this kind of stuff when you're a bureaucrat.

...

KELLY: He had a whole other host of responsibilities. He needed to stay the hell out of it. And that gave so many people the excuse. Trump's own administration says that the election was totally solid. There were legitimate disputes about the fairness of the election. And for that guy, a government employee, to use that federal agency to meddle where he shouldn't have been meddling, well, President Trump signed an executive order, and they're going to take a good, strong look at that guy.

...

KELLY: Well, the only downside is this probably helps these guys. They're going to be surrounded by law firms from the left and speaking engagements. Guys like Miles Taylor and Krebs, they'll be hailed as heroes because President Trump has targeted them.

This is totally legitimate, a totally legitimate function of the president. He suspects wrongdoing, and he can direct the Department of Justice to look into it. You know, Joe Biden tried to say he didn't when he did. And that was a big part of the deceit, right? He pretended he had nothing to do with it when he was directing it. That's what we believe. Me, actually.

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AN 2 25

Secretaries of state and election officials from across the nation gathered at separate conferences this past week in Washington, where the new administration has been moving quickly to slash the federal workforce and dismantle certain agencies.

*This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

One pressing question at the gatherings of the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors was how the shift in power will affect collaborations with federal agencies that help safeguard elections, including the FBI, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

So far, it’s hard to tell.

Commissioners and staff members from the EAC — a small agency that serves as a clearinghouse for best practices, federal grants, and data, and assesses whether voting machines meet federal standards — were visible at both conferences, and said their work continues.

A representative of the FBI’s cybersecurity division appeared at NASS, where she spoke on a panel about cybersecurity threats. An FBI representative who was expected to join a panel at NASED didn’t show.

The most glaring absence was CISA, whose reserved table at the NASED conference remained empty.

“CISA was telling us that in light of the new administration, they were reevaluating their conference attendance,” said Amy Cohen, executive director for NASED.

CISA was created in 2018, the year after federal officials designated elections as critical infrastructure. Since then, the agency has been an important partner for election officials, providing security assessments, training, and resources aimed at “protect(ing) America’s election infrastructure against new and evolving threats.”

But the agency angered President Donald Trump after it declared the November 2020 election “the most secure in American history,” disputing the false claims by Trump and his allies that fraud cost him victory. Trump responded by firing Chris Krebs, the agency’s first director, before he left office in 2021.

More recently, CISA has drawn the ire of Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick to run the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the cybersecurity agency. During her Senate confirmation hearing in January, she called for shrinking the agency.

Election officials noticed the agency’s absence.

“I note the incongruity with the fact that many of you, maybe all of you, mentioned cybersecurity … and the empty table out front that says CISA on it," Judd Choate, elections director for Colorado, told a panel of congressional staffers, an absence that he said he could “only interpret as: They were told not to attend.”

A CISA spokesperson told Votebeat that because of funding uncertainties — Congress passed a short-term funding bill that expires in March — the agency is “reevaluating all conferences and engagements until a resolution.” The agency did not say whether it had been directed not to send representatives to the conferences, or whether it would continue providing services to election officials.

Kim Wyman, a former senior election security adviser at CISA who was secretary of state for Washington during the 2020 election, said she was “certainly concerned” about the agency’s absence, but she’s trying not to read too much into it.

Wyman said CISA was a useful resource for her as secretary of state when she needed physical and cyber security assessments for local elections offices that would help them determine where improvements could be made.

“Having that direct connection to CISA gave, particularly our local counties, a lot of powerful resources to secure their systems,” she said.

Wyman, now a senior fellow on elections at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said there have been some recent “bright spots” in the federal government’s relationship with election officials, pointing specifically to the continuation of theElections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center andMulti-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, both of which are funded by CISA.

“That for me was a big positive indication that election officials are going to have these tools available,” she said. “But I am concerned that some of the direct services, like [CISA’s] elections security advisers that are in each of the 10 regions, I hope that they continue to be able to perform those duties and stay in those roles.”

Trump hasyet to name a nominee to head CISA. The most recent director, Biden appointee Jen Easterly, departed at the end of the last administration. Last week, the Trump administration placed at least seven CISA employees who work on combating foreign disinformation within the election security arm of the agency on administrative leave, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

Cohen, the NASED director, said that cyber and physical security remains a top concern for election officials.

“It is concerning that they are not here,” she said. “I hope it is not indicative of a larger shift, but it’s hard not to take it that way.”

One federal agency, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, did signal plans to work more closely with secretaries of state on elections. Election officials, primarily from Republican states, have lobbied for more access to federal data to help them determine the citizenship status of people on the voter rolls, and in some cases have sued.

CIS maintains the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, or SAVE, which allows states a way to check an individual’s immigration status, based on a unique DHS-issued identification number.

Tammy Meckley, a CIS representative who spoke on a panel at the secretaries of state conference, said the fee her agency charges for using that service is supposed to rise to $3.10 per transaction by 2028.

Meckley said she is open to working with election officials in what she described as “a different political landscape” to find other ways to search that would produce accurate matches “with a high degree of confidence.”

*Interim Editor-in-Chief Carrie Levine contributed.

*Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter atcwalker@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

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an 9 24

former Trump DHS cybersecurity director Chris Krebs says Wednesday’s massive bombshell DOJ indictment alleging Kremlin funds have been supporting a right-wing pro-MAGA U.S. media outlet to influence the 2024 election is merely the first part of what he expects to be an even larger scandal.

“I’ve been talking about this for years. It’s disinformation, it’s propaganda, and it’s all about power and influence and money. Take your pick of those three. Something’s in play here. And if the Russians are going to drop 10 million into a single outlet for a few million dollars or a few million views, I’ve got to expect they’ve got 100 million plus more that is distributed somewhere else. So this is the first shoe to drop,” said Krebs on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday (video below).

Calling the indictment itself “a fascinating read,” Krebs compared it to spy novels.

“I mean, it is this almost Ludlum-like, Tom Clancy-like story of foreign security services and foreign interests manipulating the U.S. political discourse.”

READ MORE: ‘Battening Down the Hatches’: Trump Campaign ‘In Crisis’ Say Experts After Latest Leak

Krebs explained that instead of Russia just relying on social media, what “we’ve seen is this evolution now where they diversified their platforms, and now they’re using podcasters, they’re using YouTube, they’re using fake news sites. Remember, there is a second part of this that talks about Doppelganger, which is a disinfo-for-hire organization that has these pink-slime fake websites that look a lot like Washington Post, CNN and others, and they boost fake news, AI generated content, videos, images. It is a very, very complex scheme that DOJ the intelligence community are working hard to unravel.”

“I was over the moon with these documents yesterday that we can expose them and start tearing down this infrastructure,” Krebs rejoiced.

“So we know that they are fully engaged and attempting to manipulate U.S. political discourse. They’re going after influential members of the elite. And you know, look, whether you want to call the podcasters or YouTubers, ‘the elite,’ it doesn’t matter they have reach. They have the ability to reach out and touch minds.”

READ MORE: ‘Shameful Lies’: Rick Scott Tells Students ‘Demented’ Claim About Abortion

Krebs suggested none of this is by accident.

“There are very complex strategies behind the scenes. We are seeing the tip of the iceberg, and there will be more,” Krebs warned.

Donald Trump fired Chris Krebs as the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) after he produced a report stating the 2020 election was the most secure in the nation’s history, contrary to Trump’s false “Big Lie” allegations of election fraud and election rigging.

Watch the video below or at this link.

---

NPR 6 24

The Stanford Internet Observatory, a prominent research group at Stanford University studying how social media platforms are abused, has lost its top leadership and faces an uncertain future amid a sustained right-wing campaign targeting the study of online falsehoods.

The SIO's founding director, Alex Stamos, left his position in November. In recent weeks, the university did not renew the contract of Renée DiResta, the group's research manager, along with other staffers. Remaining staff have been told to look for other jobs, according to the tech newsletter Platformer, which first reported the news.

The SIO was founded five years ago as a cross-disciplinary program examining some of the thorniest issues raised by the proliferation of the internet, including the way social networks such as Instagram are used for child exploitation and the spread of false and misleading information about elections and vaccines.

Fighting False Election Claims Could Get A Lot Harder In 2024

But in the past year, the work of researchers at SIO and other institutions studying viral falsehoods and their impact on democracy have become the focus of scrutiny by Republicans in the courts and in Congress, who allege their work amounts to censorship.

The Election Integrity Partnership, a joint project SIO ran with the University of Washington to track false and misleading information about the 2020 and 2022 elections, became the focus of conspiracy theories that it was a front for the government to suppress speech it didn't like. (The EIP's website was updated in recent weeks to say it "will not be working on the 2024 or future elections.")

As a result, researchers at Stanford, UW and other institutions have been hit with lawsuits, flooded with subpoenas and document requests, and subjected to online harassment and attacks.

That's added up to millions of dollars in legal fees and significant amounts of time responding to congressional inquiries and lawsuits, which researchers say has been a distraction from their core work. The Washington Post reported on Friday that SIO has struggled to raise money to continue funding its work in an increasingly hostile climate.}:

In response to the news of SIO's pullback, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who has spearheaded efforts to discredit researchers through his chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee, posted on X on Friday: "Free speech wins again!" and accused SIO of being part of "the censorship regime."

Stanford University pushed back against the idea that SIO is being dismantled.

"The important work of SIO continues under new leadership, including its critical work on child safety and other online harms, its publication of the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, the Trust and Safety Research Conference, and the Trust and Safety Teaching Consortium," university spokesperson Dee Mostofi said in a statement. "Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including lawsuits and congressional investigations, that chill freedom of inquiry and undermine legitimate and much needed academic research – both at Stanford and across academia."

SIO staff, including Stamos and DiResta, have been targeted by Jordan's Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which alleges that government agencies, tech companies and academics have colluded to unconstitutionally shut down conservative speech — a claim the accused parties deny. In addition, Stamos and DiResta are named in an ongoing private lawsuit brought by America First Legal, an organization run by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

LAW

Supreme Court examines whether government can combat disinformation online

The SIO and other academic research groups were also initially named in a lawsuit brought against the Biden administration by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana making similar claims of collusion. The researchers have since been dropped from that case, which the Supreme Court is expected to rule on in the coming weeks.

"The politically motivated attacks against our research on elections and vaccines have no merit, and the attempts by partisan House committee chairs to suppress First Amendment-protected research are a quintessential example of the weaponization of government," Stamos and DiResta said in a statement first given to Platformer.

"We are thankful to Stanford for defending our work, including in front of the US Supreme Court, and are confident that the judicial system will eventually act to protect our speech and the speech of other academics," they wrote. "We hope that Stanford is willing to support the remainder of the SIO team and serve as a safe home for future research into how the internet is used to cause harm against individuals and our democracy."

REF 11 2023

Why countering false election claims may be harder in 2024 : NPR

in Marion County, Fla., elections supervisor Wesley Wilcox has stopped using the word "misinformation."

Not because lies or misleading rumors about elections are any less prevalent in his county than the rest of the country. Wilcox says he regularly interacts with groups that aim to find what they see as rampant fraud in elections.

But Wilcox, who is a Republican, has had to shift his vocabulary to talk about those falsehoods because others in his party see the term as code for censorship of conservatives.

"In Republican circles, 'misinformation' is a dog whistle," Wilcox said. "All of a sudden, man, you got skewered if you even mention the word."

ELECTIONS

Republican states swore off a voting tool. Now they're scrambling to recreate it

An election partnership that Wilcox helps lead has even stopped advertising a service that allows local officials to report false voting information online, for fear of conservative backlash — a sign of broader concerns of those who work to safeguard elections as America nears another round of presidential voting.

Experts say a campaign of legal and political pressure from the right has cast efforts to combat rumors and conspiracy theories as censorship. And as a result, they say, the tools and partnerships that tried to flag and tamp down on falsehoods in recent election cycles have been scaled back or dismantled. That's even as threats loom from foreign governments and artificial intelligence, and as former President Donald Trump, who still falsely claims to have won the 2020 contest, is likely to use the same tactics again as he pursues the White House in 2024.

Added Wilcox: "Everybody is gun-shy."

"Open season"

As Nina Jankowicz sees it, the opening salvo came in the spring of 2022, when a right-wing campaign quickly snuffed out a Department of Homeland Security initiative called the Disinformation Governance Board.

POLITICS

She joined DHS to fight disinformation. She says she was halted by... disinformation

Jankowicz, who has written books about Russian information operations and online harassment, was tapped to lead the board. The federal government described it as a working group, without "any operational authority or capability," tasked with coordinating efforts to identify false and misleading claims and share facts about security concerns, from elections to natural disasters.

But the combination of the board's ominous-sounding name and DHS's poor efforts to communicate its purpose made it catnip for right-wing influencers, who quickly seized on the board and Jankowicz herself as avatars of a nefarious plot to censor Americans.

"The Biden Administration's decision to stand up a 'Ministry of Truth,' is dystopian in design," said now-House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., shortly after the board was announced. "The government has no role whatsoever in determining what constitutes truth or acceptable speech."

Supporters of former President Donald Trump look at merchandise ahead of his rally in Hialeah, Fla., this week. Trump continues to falsely claim he won the 2020 election, fueling conspiracy theories around the voting process.

Ricardo Ardeuengo/AFP via Getty Images

After a barrage of death threats and abuse, Jankowicz resigned, and DHS scrapped the board altogether. Jankowicz told NPR that the timid effort by the federal government to defend her or push back against the allegations sent a clear message.

"That showed ... that it was open season on researchers, on civil servants, on anyone who was working in this space," Jankowicz said.

Amid that furor, in May 2022, the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana filed a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of colluding with social media companies to censor conservative speech, by pressing platforms to take action on misleading posts about COVID-19 and elections.

LAW

Supreme Court to hear court ban on government contact with social media companies

This July, a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled the government had likely violated the First Amendment and issued a sweeping injunction blocking agencies' communications with platforms about most content. The injunction was narrowed by an appeals court, before being put on hold last month by the Supreme Court, which is slated to hear the case this term.

Pressure is coming from Congress as well, where the House Judiciary Committee's Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a Trump ally, is conducting its own probe into alleged collusion between the Biden administration and tech companies to unconstitutionally shut down political speech.

To be sure, there is an open debate about what role the government should take in countering rumors or lies about high-risk subjects like elections and public health, and widespread skepticism about the power social media companies wield over public discourse.

But the government, platforms and researchers say the lawsuit and investigation unfairly mischaracterize their communications. They say that while officials and outside groups flag content they believe may break the social networks' rules, it's ultimately up to the tech companies to decide what action to take.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, center, is leading a congressional investigation into what he and other conservatives describe as a joint effort by the federal government, researchers and tech companies to censor conservative points of view. He's seen here after a March hearing with Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., left, and now-Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Jordan is subpoenaing researchers and social media companies, demanding years of email correspondence and conducting hours-long interviews, which his staff has used to make explosive accusations against federal agencies, nonprofit organizations and academic institutions.

"What the federal government could not do directly, it effectively outsourced to the newly emerging censorship-industrial complex," committee staff wrote in a report published this week.

"The Committee's ongoing investigation focuses on the federal government's involvement in speech censorship, and the investigation's purpose is to inform legislative solutions for how to protect free speech," said Nadgey Louis-Charles, a spokesperson for the House Judiciary Committee.

The rise of content moderation, and the backlash

Election misinformation isn't a new phenomenon; there have been false and misleading claims as long as there have been elections.

But efforts by Russia in 2016 to use social media to meddle in the U.S. presidential election were a wake-up call for tech companies and the government about the power of online platforms to amplify rumors, conspiracy theories and lies.

UNTANGLING DISINFORMATION

Meta says Chinese, Russian influence operations are among the biggest it's taken down

Under public pressure, Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites created policies prohibiting false election claims and set up teams devoted to monitoring abuse, from cracking down on posts telling people the wrong day to vote to disrupting coordinated influence operations backed by foreign governments.

At roughly the same time, in January 2017, DHS designated the country's voting systems as critical infrastructure, meaning that keeping local and state systems safe from hostile actors was officially under the federal government's purview.

But it was becoming increasingly clear that foreign adversaries were also targeting the minds of American voters, so the federal government started wading into the thorny world of online information. Ahead of the 2018 midterms, DHS began coordinating with social media companies around election misinformation.

UNTANGLING DISINFORMATION

How the 'Stop the Steal' movement outwitted Facebook ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection

The tech platforms got more aggressive about policing content, with moderation reaching what some experts argue was a peak in 2020 and 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. They began labeling false and misleading claims, including, controversially, posts by then-President Trump. After the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the big platforms all suspended Trump.

The rise of those policies, along with high-profile disputes over how they have been applied, sparked a backlash from conservatives and some disaffected liberals who say platforms went too far in limiting speech.

Efforts to the back burner, and a rebranded 'Rumor Control'

Wilcox, the election administrator in Florida, sits on the executive committee of a nationwide partnership for election officials called the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC) that was created after the 2016 election.

But he says he's had to downplay that work when talking to voters because the EI-ISAC is funded by DHS, which has become the target of conspiracies. One conspiracy theory info packet viewed by NPR, acquired in a records request in Texas by the transparency group American Oversight, detailed how the EI-ISAC was "likely manipulating our County vote tallies."

"I have to be very careful," Wilcox said. "I can't even go out locally and tell anybody that I sit on this board because DHS is the bad guy."

[Voters cast ballots in Louisville, Ky., this week. In recent years, local election officials have come to rely a variety of mechanisms to share information about rumors and conspiracy theories about elections.

Michael Swensen/Getty Images

One of the functions the EI-ISAC took on around 2020 was to essentially give thousands of election officials across the U.S. somewhere central to report false and misleading information. The group then disseminated that information to researchers at a few universities for narrative tracking and to the tech companies for review to see if it violated their policies, through an effort called the Election Integrity Partnership.

Those efforts, which took place under the Trump administration, have become the subject of claims by Jordan's weaponization subcommittee that they're part of a coordinated push by the government to "conduct censorship by proxy."

Wilcox says today, the EI-ISAC is no longer advertising that service. They're back to focusing strictly on cybersecurity.

"It's still out there, but it's really run back to a back burner," Wilcox said. "[DHS] has kind of shied away from even those types of things, just because of the exposure."

The agency's cybersecurity and infrastructure security arm, CISA, confirmed to NPR that it had no contact on Tuesday's Election Day with any social media companies.

Another feature of DHS's election security work that seems to be fading into the background is a website called "Rumor Control." As votes were being counted in 2020, the site served almost as a live-debunking tool, responding to election misinformation in real time.

Kathy Boockvar oversaw elections in 2020 in Pennsylvania as its secretary of the commonwealth, and she remembers leaning on Rumor Control when she began getting questions from Republican state legislators in her state about a conspiracy theory in Arizona involving Sharpies.

"I remember specifically that CISA had a section on the Rumor Control website to explain that there was no -gate in Sharpiegate," Boockvar said, referring to a rumor that spread on election night 2020 in Arizona that using permanent markers on ballots would bleed through and invalidate votes. "I was actually able to share something that had the credibility of the federal government security agency — and frankly, it was the federal government under President Trump."

Boockvar, who has since started a consulting firm focused on improving elections, noticed during last year's midterm elections that Rumor Control was not being updated as frequently, and seemed to be more limited in its scope. The site has since been rebranded, not to focus on "jurisdiction-specific claims," but instead explaining election processes more broadly.

CNN also reported last year that CISA turned down a multimillion-dollar proposal to protect election officials from harassment ahead of the midterms.

During a background briefing call with reporters on Tuesday, a senior CISA official downplayed concerns from local election officials that CISA was being more hands-off when it comes to misinformation.

"When it comes to foreign influence operations and disinformation, this is an area where we remain committed to ensuring that state and local election officials are provided with the techniques and tactics and procedures that we know foreign adversaries are using so that they have awareness of the threats," the official said. "We continue to amplify election officials as trusted sources of information."

But experts worry that local election officials often don't have the resources or time to combat false information online, especially in a rapidly changing technological environment, in addition to their other responsibilities.

"There is only so much you can ask an election official to do and to do well. And we are nearing capacity on people," Wilcox said. "You want me to be a cybersecurity expert? You want me to be a database expert? Now I've got to be an AI expert. I'm like, I'm sorry. At some point, I got to tap out and say, 'I just don't have it.'"

"Weaponized criticism"

The pressure campaign and the uncertainty caused by the paused legal injunction have also chilled communications between people who track and study the spread of rumors and false narratives and the platforms themselves.

Academics and researchers who participated in the Election Integrity Partnership in 2020 have been targeted by Jordan's probe, as well as a private lawsuit brought by America First Legal, an organization run by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Those involved say it's unlikely the partnership will have the same level of information sharing next year.

"The weaponized criticism of research on misinformation is having a negative impact on our ability to understand and address what many of us feel to be a pretty large societal problem," said Kate Starbird, a co-founder of the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, one of the members of the EIP. She's been the target of harassment and threats over that work.

"They are limiting our ability just to do the research, because we're spending too much time with our lawyers, but also limiting our ability to have conversations with the people who need our work the most, whether that's election officials or whether that's social media platforms," she said.

Starbird says despite the pressure, her UW team is continuing its work and plans to do rapid response to viral rumors once again in 2024. That means they will be tracking, analyzing and communicating — even if it looks different than in previous cycles.

"How do we make sure people can use our outputs, even people that can't maybe talk to us directly because they're afraid about being given a lawsuit or being tied into the next conspiracy theory?" she said.

Dialogue between the people running elections, researchers and the tech companies is critical, said Eddie Perez, who oversaw Twitter's election integrity work before leaving in September 2022 amid Elon Musk's purchase of the company. He's now a board member at the OSET Institute, a nonprofit focused on election infrastructure.

"There are moments where [the platforms] need to rely on substantive information from subject matter experts," Perez said. He cites the Sharpiegate rumors in 2020 that Boockvar also mentioned and which Rumor Control knocked down.

"It's rare for a social media company to have on board somebody that is that familiar with voting technology, for example, to be able to say, 'Look, here's the real story,'" Perez said. "They have an interest in trying to get the answers really quickly, because by definition, when something is viral, the damage is done very quickly."

Social media platforms step back from the spotlight

[The headquarters of X, formerly Twitter, in San Francisco. The company has largely stopped trying to police viral lies on its site and has dismantled teams that deal with election integrity.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Worsening matters is the pervasive sense that social media platforms are backing off efforts to more aggressively police and counter false and misleading election claims and conspiracy theories. Layoffs in the tech industry have hit teams working on trust and safety, leaving many working on election integrity uncertain about who to talk to.

"[The platforms] would reach out to us all the time. And that's just not happening. It's gone silent," Starbird said.

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, still has channels for election officials to reach out and teams responsible for different states, according to a person familiar with the company's work.

YouTube said it continues to invest in making the video platform a reliable source for election news and information and prohibits content that misleads people on how to vote or encourages interference in the democratic process.

Both companies declined to comment on their interactions with government officials and researchers.

UNTANGLING DISINFORMATION

YouTube will no longer take down false claims about U.S. elections

UNTANGLING DISINFORMATION

Elon Musk sues disinformation researchers, claiming they are driving away advertisers

The most drastic pullback has come at X, formerly Twitter, where Musk has eliminated the election integrity team entirely, unwound many of the platform's policies, and made changes that critics say amplify the spread of harmful content. Musk has also made it difficult for researchers to study the platform and even sued a nonprofit research group whose work he objected to.

A press email address for X responded to a request for comment with an auto-reply saying "Busy now, please check back later."

Boockvar said even in 2020, it was difficult enough getting the platforms to respond quickly to bad information as it spread.

"If they're taking a step back, or 10 steps back. ... We're basically empowering the disinformation to spread," she said.

---

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Krebs

Christopher Cox Krebs (born 1977) is an American attorney who served as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the United States Department of Homeland Security from November 2018 until November 17, 2020 when President Donald Trump fired Krebs for contradicting Trump's claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election.^[1]

Contents

• :{1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Early life and education:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Career:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
  • :{2.1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{2020 dismissal:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
  • :{2.2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Private-sector career:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{References:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{4:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{External links:(style="display:table-cell"):}:

Early life and education:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

Krebs was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977.^[2] He received a Bachelor's degree in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999 and a Juris Doctor from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.^[3][2]

Career:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

Krebs's professional work has focused on cybersecurity and risk management issues. He served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft.^[4][5][6]

In March 2017, he became Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security. In August 2017, he was appointed Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, and performed the duties of the Under Secretary of Homeland Security for National Protection and Programs until he was confirmed to that position on a permanent basis on June 15, 2018. In November 2018, the National Protection and Programs Directorate was replaced by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Krebs remained as director of the agency.^[4]

It was reported that Krebs was being considered to serve as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security after the departure of Kevin McAleenan,^[7] although he was reported to be uninterested in the position.^[8]

2020 dismissal[

On November 12, 2020, it was reported that Krebs expected to be fired from his position; in part, this expectation was due to Krebs's role in creating a CISA website^[9] to debunk election-related disinformation, much of which was being promoted by President Donald Trump and his allies.^[10][11] As CISA's director, Krebs was the "administration's most senior cybersecurity official responsible for securing the presidential election".^[12] 

Sidney Powell, an attorney for Trump and Michael Flynn, asserted on the Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo Fox News programs that a secret government supercomputer program had switched votes from Trump to Biden in the election, a claim Krebs dismissed as "nonsense" and a "hoax."^[13]

On November 17, 2020, Krebs said in a tweet that "59 election security experts all agree, 'in every case of which we are aware, these claims (of fraud) either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.'"^[14] Trump fired Krebs via Twitter the same day, because 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 provided no evidence of this fraud.^[15][14]

Later that month, a lawyer for the Trump campaign, Joseph diGenova, called for Krebs to be "drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot". DiGenova's specific criticism was that Krebs "thinks the election went well".^[16][17] Krebs responded to diGenova's tweet in an op-ed in The Washington Post, saying "I am not going to be intimidated by these threats from telling the truth to the American people."^[18]

On December 8, 2020, Krebs filed a civil lawsuit against diGenova, the Trump campaign, and Newsmax TV, accusing them of "defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, aiding and abetting, and civil conspiracy". He said that he has received "a barrage of threats and harassment" as a result of diGenova's comments and "faces a genuine risk of imminent harm".^[19]

On January 10, 2021, Krebs suggested that Trump should resign the presidency following the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol.^[20]

Private-sector career[

After leaving office, Krebs joined former Facebook CISO Alex Stamos at the beginning of 2021 to form Krebs Stamos Group, a cybersecurity consultancy, which quickly landed its first customer, the recently-beleaguered SolarWinds.^[21][22][23]

References[

1. ^ Macias, Amanda (November 18, 2020). "Trump says DHS cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs has been terminated". CNBC. Archived from the original on November 18, 2020. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
2. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Krebs#cite_ref-senatehearing_2-1) "Nomination of Christopher C. Krebs to be Under Secretary, National Protection and Programs Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security" (PDF). Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, United States Senate. April 25, 2018. pp. 35–36.
3. ^ "Christopher C. Krebs". Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency. November 17, 2020. Archived from the original on November 18, 2020.
4. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Krebs#cite_ref-dhsbio_4-1) "Christopher C. Krebs". Department of Homeland Security. September 5, 2017. Archived from the original on May 7, 2019. Retrieved October 12, 2019.
5. ^ Zakrzewski, Cat; Inzaurralde, Bastien (November 16, 2020). "The Cybersecurity 202: Trump set to make a new DHS agency the top federal cyber cop". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 18, 2020. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
6. ^ "President Trump Signs Law Establishing DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency". Water ISAC. November 20, 2018. Archived from the original on November 18, 2020. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
7. ^ Restuccia, Michelle; Hackman, Andrew (October 21, 2019). "White House Personnel Director Tells Trump Top DHS Secretary Picks Ineligible for Job". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on October 21, 2019. Retrieved October 21, 2019.
8. ^ Kanno-Youngs, Zolan; Haberman, Maggie (October 21, 2019). "Trump Running Out of Options for Homeland Security Secretary". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on November 18, 2020. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
9. ^ "Rumor Control". CISA.
10. ^ Geller, Eric (November 12, 2020). "Top cyber official expecting to be fired as White House frustrations hit agency protecting elections". Politico. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
11. ^ Bing, Christopher; Menn, Joseph; Satter, Raphael (November 12, 2020). "Exclusive: Top official on U.S. election cybersecurity tells associates he expects to be fired". Reuters. Archived from the original on November 18, 2020. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
12. ^ Sanger, David E.; Perlroth, Nicole (November 18, 2020). "Trump Fires Christopher Krebs, Official Who Disputed Election Fraud Claims". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
13. ^ Fichera, Angelo; Spencer, Saranac Hale (November 13, 2020). "Bogus Theory Claims Supercomputer Switched Votes in Election". FactCheck.org. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
14. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Krebs#cite_ref-Nakashima_14-1) Nakashima, Ellen; Miroff, Nick (November 17, 2020). "Trump fires top DHS official who refuted his claims that the election was rigged". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 18, 2020. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
15. ^ Sanger, David E. (November 18, 2020). "Trump fires Christopher Krebs, whose agency disputed president's false claims of election fraud". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on November 18, 2020. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
16. ^ Wong, Julia. "Arizona and Wisconsin certify Joe Biden's win as Trump continues to challenge results – as it happened". The Guardian. Archived from the original on December 1, 2020. Retrieved December 1, 2020.
17. ^ Harvey, Josephine (November 30, 2020). "Trump Lawyer Says Fired Cybersecurity Chief Should Be 'Shot' For Defending Election". HuffPost. Retrieved December 1, 2020.
18. ^ Krebs, Christopher (December 1, 2020). "Trump fired me for saying this, but I'll say it again: The election wasn't rigged". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
19. ^ Feuer, Alan (December 8, 2020). "Christopher Krebs, a fired Trump official, sues the campaign and the lawyer who said he should be shot". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
20. ^ Tamborrino, Kelsey (January 10, 2021). "Former election cybersecurity chief: Trump can redeem himself by resigning". Politico. Retrieved January 10, 2021.
21. ^ Sebenius, Alyza (January 8, 2021). "SolarWinds Taps Krebs, Stamos to Help Investigate Hack". Bloomberg. Retrieved June 19, 2021. SolarWinds Corp. has tapped prominent security experts Chris Krebs and Alex Stamos to review its practices after suspected Russian hackers compromised the company’s software and conducted a sprawling hack across the U.S. government and private sector. The contract with SolarWinds is the first for a newly formed venture Krebs and Stamos have created together. The Krebs Stamos Group will advise clients on cybersecurity, with a focus on areas including foreign threats and crisis situations. The group will work toward 'national and economic security,' Krebs said in a statement Friday.
22. ^ Hamilton, Isobel Asher (January 8, 2021). "SolarWinds has hired ex-CISA chief Chris Krebs and Facebook's former security lead Alex Stamos months after its huge hack". Business Insider. Retrieved June 19, 2021. SolarWinds has hired two of the biggest names in cybersecurity, following the gigantic breach, which meant it acted as the gateway for hackers to penetrate US government systems. SolarWinds announced on Thursday it was retaining a new security consulting business founded by Chris Krebs, a former Homeland Security cybersecurity official, and ex-Facebook security chief and Stanford University professor Alex Stamos.
23. ^ Whittaker, Zach (January 8, 2021). "Chris Krebs and Alex Stamos have started a cyber consulting firm". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 19, 2021. Former U.S. cybersecurity official Chris Krebs and former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos have founded a new cybersecurity consultancy firm, which already has its first client: SolarWinds. The two have been hired as consultants to help the Texas-based software maker recover from a devastating breach by suspected Russian hackers. Krebs was one of the most senior cybersecurity officials in the U.S. government, most recently serving as the director of Homeland Security’s CISA cybersecurity advisory agency from 2018, until he was fired by President Trump for his efforts to debunk false election claims — many of which came from the president himself. Stamos, meanwhile, joined the Stanford Internet Observatory after holding senior cybersecurity positions at Facebook and Yahoo. He also consulted for Zoom amid a spate of security problems.

External links:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

• Krebs Stamos Group official web site
• Appearances on C-SPAN 
• Chris Krebs on Twitter 
•  Media related to Christopher C. Krebs at Wikimedia Commons

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• Microsoft employees
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...After Trump announced on November 14 that he would be challenging the election results in court, Giuliani was tasked with creating a team of lawyers. In a November 19 press conference, Giuliani announced theteam, which included Victoria Toensing, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Joseph diGenova. Less than three weeks after joining Giuliani’s team, diGenova appeared on a far-right Newsmax podcast and called for the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Chris Krebs, to be “drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot” for stating that the 2020 election was free of manipulation.

In the meantime, Giuliani and Ellis were pressuring Republican state lawmakers to unilaterally overturn the results in their states. Previous reporting has established that they met with the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee on November 25, during which Ellis urged Pennsylvania lawmakers to fix a “corrupted, irredeemably compromised election,” either by arranging for a new, “special election” or directing “the manner of your electors.”

Similar appeals were made by Ellis and Giuliani toArizona lawmakers on November 30, Michigan lawmakerson December 2 and Georgiarepresentatives on December 4.

The Post report states that on January 2, 2021 Trump, Giuliani and Eastman spoke to 300 state legislators on a conference call to provide “evidence of fraud” and galvanize the lawmakers to “decertify” the election results. “You have the real power,” Trump told the lawmakers, according to a report in the Washington Examiner. “You’re the ones that are going to make the decision.”