President Donald Trump on Wednesday directed federal agencies to revoke the security clearances and review the activities of two high-level former government officials who questioned his election fraud claims and his conduct in his first term.
Christopher Krebs, the former head of the federal government’s top cybersecurity agency, said the 2020 elections were won by Joe Biden, contradicting Trump’s claim that the election was stolen.
Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official, wrote an anonymous memoir that criticized Trump’s handling of classified documents and other conduct during his first term.
One memorandum signed by Trump directed the Attorney General and the Homeland Security secretary to “take all appropriate action to review” the activities of Krebs. Another directed the Homeland Security secretary to review Taylor’s activities as a government employee.
The memo relating to Krebs described him as a “significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority.”
The other memo said Taylor “stoked dissension by manufacturing sensationalist reports on the existence of a supposed ‘resistance’ within the Federal Government.”
Krebs declined to comment. Taylor said on X that he wasn’t surprised by the president’s actions.
“I said this would happen,” Taylor wrote. “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path.”
He added: “Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”
Taylor wrote an anonymous op-ed while he was working at the Department of Homeland Security in which he said many senior administration officials were trying to limit Trump’s impulses and frustrate his agenda.
In his memoir, Taylor describes having heard about Trump’s interest in “tapping” the phones of White House aides in a bid to stanch media leaks.
Krebs was the first director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, of CISA, which under the Trump administration began offering cybersecurity and physical security help to state and local election officials.
Trump fired Krebs in a tweet in November 2020 over the agency’s Rumor Control website, which corrected falsehoods about election integrity, many of which Trump and his allies promoted.
Krebs was among the most vocal government officials debunking baseless claims about election manipulation, particularly addressing a conspiracy theory centered on Dominion Voting Systems machines that Trump’s lawyers have pushed.
As a prominent critic of Trump’s false claims that the election 2020 was stolen, Krebs has been a consistent target for Trump.
Chloe Atkins contributed.
