Election security official fired by Trump claims Giuliani press conference ‘most dangerous’ in TV history
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Fired US cybersecurity official Chris Krebs said Rudy Giuliani's "path to victory" press conference was the "most dangerous" 1 hour and 45 minutes in the history of American television.
A day after he was sacked by Donald Trump for claiming the presidential election was the most secure in US history, Mr Krebs tuned into Mr Giuliani's theories of a "national conspiracy" backed by a communist cabal of Venezuelan, Chinese and Cuban collaborators to place Joe Biden in the White House.
"And possibly the craziest. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lucky," Mr Krebes said in a tweet.
That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history. And possibly the craziest. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lucky.
— Tom Rorow (@C_C_Krebs) November 19, 2020
Billed by the president as his "viable path to victory", the focus of the press conference was waylaid by Mr Giuliani's leaking hair dye sweating down his face and his reenactment of a scene from the movie My Cousin Vinnie.
Between the memes, the so-called "Kraken" of evidence released by the campaign's lawyers included hundreds of affidavits in key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where they hope to overturn the results.
Their star witness, via affidavit, was City of Detroit employee Jessie Jacob, who Mr Giuliani says swore under penalty of perjury that she was instructed by supervisors to cheat for Biden by backdating ballots to make them valid.
That assessment is in stark contrast to that of Mr Krebs, who as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a statement saying the 3 November election was the most secure in American history.
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," said the statement from CISA, which is part of the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security.
It was co-signed by the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) and Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council.
Mr Trump said that statement was the explicit reason for firing Mr Krebs on Tuesday, claiming his assessment was “highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud - including dead people voting, Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, “glitches” in the voting machines which changed”.
...votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more. Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2020
Hours before being fired, Mr Krebs repeated his agency's assessment from his official government Twitter account that 59 election security expert agreed that claims otherwise have been "unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent".
Hours after being fired, he responded on his personal Twitter account saying "we did it right".
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