Chris Krebs: Trump fires director of Homeland Security agency who had rejected President’s election conspiracy theories

CNN — President Donald 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.” “Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.” RELATED: CNN’s live presidential election results CNN reported that Krebs, who ran the cyber arm of the Department of Homeland Security, expected to be fired. Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine and co-chair of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, said in a statement, “By firing Mr. Krebs for simply doing his job, President Trump is inflicting severe damage on all Americans – who rely on CISA’s defenses, even if they don’t know it.” “If there’s any silver lining in this unjust decision, it’s this: I hope that President-elect Biden will recognize Chris’s contributions, and consult with him as the Biden administration charts the future of this critically important agency,” King said. Ben Hovland, a Trump appointee who is chairman of the US Election Assistance Commission, praised Krebs during an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett on “OutFront” as a “great director” who “showed a lot of leadership, particularly in the election space.” Asked about the President’s false claims of massive voter fraud, Hovland explained, “When you talk to election officials across the country, they’re confident in the security of this election. I think what he was trying to do in an unprecedented way was to connect with every state in the country, and give them what they needed to protect and have a firewall in place to protect against cyber attacks.” Krebs kept up the fact check of the President’s conspiracy-mongering until the final hours of his tenure, tweeting earlier Tuesday that claims of manipulation of election systems “either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” He was quoting from a letter signed by 59 election specialists that also said that “anyone asserting that a US election was ‘rigged’ is making an extraordinary claim” and called them “alarming assertions.” Firing Krebs, a US official previously told CNN, would “cross a red line” and set off alarm bells throughout the national security apparatus.