Trump fires cybersecurity boss Chris Krebs for doing his job: Securing the election and telling the truth about it
- Reference: 1605664364
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/11/18/trump_fires_krebs/
- Source link:
Director Christopher Krebs was “terminated” by a presidential tweet, on grounds that he last week co-signed a [2]statement that assessed the 2020 US presidential election as “the most secure in American history.”
The Trump 2020 campaign and the Tweeter-in-Chief both challenge that assessment of election security, and allege widespread voter fraud, but have yet to offer any hard evidence of wrongdoing. Their flawed lawsuits seeking to overturn this year's US elections have largely collapsed, and Democrat Joe Biden is [3]projected to win the White House race.
One such lawsuit, which failed today, is detailed in a [4]judgment [PDF] from Pennsylvania's Supreme Court, rejecting a complaint that election observers were not allowed sufficiently close to votes to verify the fairness of the counting process or validity of the ballots.
Leaders of other agencies that co-signed the aforementioned statement with Krebs on election security appear not to have been dismissed at the time of writing, leaving the singling-out of Krebs an oddity.
However, President Trump is known not to have been thrilled that Krebs directed CISA to create a website called [5]Rumor control that debunked election-related disinformation. The site contradicts some of the baseless allegations that Trump made about election practices.
The Register will not detail those allegations as to do so would be to amplify almost-certainly fantasy assertions: readers can easily find the president’s [6]Twitter account if they wish to go to a primary source of disputed facts.
It is unclear what President Trump hopes to achieve by firing the highly respected Krebs, who is said to have expected his dismissal and took it on the chin with the following tweet:
Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomrorow. [7]#Protect2020 — Chris Krebs (@C_C_Krebs) [8]November 18, 2020
Ironically, the creation of CISA was a Trump administration achievement that aimed to increase focus and resources dedicated to the nation's digital defenses. Creating the agency even fulfilled a 2016 campaign promise.
Trump gave his team kudos for succeeding in that aim with another tweet that opened: “The only thing secure about our 2020 Election was that it was virtually impenetrable by foreign powers. On that, the Trump Administration takes great credit.”
The tweet then advanced further conspiracy theories, earning it a label from Twitter saying its content was disputed. The tweets firing Krebs were also labelled as containing disputed claims. Contrast to Krebs's final tweet as CISA director, which is below... ®
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." [9]#Protect2020 [10]https://t.co/Oj6NciYruD — Chris Krebs #Protect2020 (@CISAKrebs) [11]November 17, 2020
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.cisa.gov/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/13/us_election_security_fears_doused/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/07/us_presidential_campaign/
[4] http://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Supreme/out/J-116-2020mo%20-%20104608159120049033.pdf?cb=1
[5] https://www.cisa.gov/rumorcontrol
[6] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/
[7] https://twitter.com/hashtag/Protect2020?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[8] https://twitter.com/C_C_Krebs/status/1328859222071783424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[9] https://twitter.com/hashtag/Protect2020?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[10] https://t.co/Oj6NciYruD
[11] https://twitter.com/CISAKrebs/status/1328741106624901120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Worlds biggest snowflake
Donald J Trump
Projection
Lindsey Graham goes to the Georgia Republican Secretary of State and tries to get him to toss out legally cast mail in ballots for whole districts using the excuse of some signatures not matching sufficiently well.
We know this because the Georgia Republican found it abhorrent enough to push back against it. He's already checked those ballots and they are real, and legally cast.
How many times did Lindsey Graham do that to Republican Secretaries of state and they didn't push back, they simply did it?
How many legally cast ballots have Republican secretaries of state tossed on behalf of Lindsey Graham to rig their votes for Republicans?
How many Republican Secretaries of State failed to call the FBI on Lindsey Graham and his election rigging scheme?
How many Republicans "won" their seats by his voter suppression trick?
You see Trump, now blaiming the voting machines. Voting machines that overwhelmingly voted for Trump! It's projection, he's tell you he didn't rig the election enough and he wants a do-over. The next time the voting machines will massively, 98.5% vote for Trump. It's all projection with this lot, if they're screaming voter fraud, they're confessing to voter fraud.
Voter fraud so blatant that even Republican Secretaries of State couldn't stomach it.
Well at least one of them couldn't!
Another one bites the dust
Obviously, he didn't understand that he was appointed to ensure that Trump won.
Come to watch the lunatic
For part of the 17th century the Bedlam Hospital (Roughly London lunatic asylum) allowed and encouraged the public to come and look at the patients. It was one way to raise funds. That sort of thing is terribly frowned upon nowadays... But I have no qualms about buffoons in power being mercilessly mocked. Let's not hurt harmless lunatics but the 'Napoleons of the 21st century' should be jeered into oblivion.
Petro Ruble
Puppet not lunatic.
Look at the other things he's doing while he's distracting with his attack on US democracy: Ordering a frantic pullout of troops in Afghanistan & Iraq before January 20th.
So he clearly understands that he won't be President by then, otherwise he wouldn't be in such a rush.
The people he sacked and replaced in the Department of Defense to get this done. Their early sacking means he knew he would lose at the point he did those changes to the Defense Department. He knew he would be frantically pulling troops even then.
So he might sound delusional about the election loss, but his actions indicated deception, not delusion.
Why puppet?
You can see the pushback from Senate Republicans, which means it wasn't his Republican colleagues idea, it was his Russian colleagues idea.
Imagine Russian with nukes in the middle east threatening Saudi Arabia (Trump unilaterally cancelled a nuke deployment treaty + withdrew and handed over Syria to Putin, now Iraq is going the same way, and Iran is being bombed to drive it to Putin).
The much delayed TAPI pipeline, delayed by Taliban attacks, Putin has his Taliban agreement, with America gone, he controls the pipeline. He controls Asian oil exports too.
He has part of the Baku pipleline via the South Ossetia invasion, he can take the rest of Georgia (the country) quite easily in the remaining Trump time-space.
Hello Petro-Ruble.
Petro-dollar, taught in Economics class now as the primary asset that the dollar is leveraged off. A few years time it will be taught in History class as the primary reason for the demise of the US.
United States will still be a world leader, but in landscaping. You want a new golf course designed for an Oligarch? Call "Trumps-Total-Landscaping"!
No petro-dollar, no dollar printing press. Putin gets it all. All very predictable.
Because of course
See title.