Top election security official expects to be fired -sources
CHRIS KREBS: "You don't mess around with our elections."
Top U.S. cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, who told Reuters last year that the 2020 election would be the most secure to date, has told associates he expects to be fired by the White House.
That's according to an exclusive Reuters report on Thursday, citing three sources familiar with the matter.
Krebs, who heads the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, has drawn praise from both Democrats and Republicans for his handling of the U.S. election, which generally ran smoothly despite persistent fears that foreign hackers might try to undermine the vote.
But, according to the three people familiar with the matter, Krebs drew the ire of the Trump White House over a website run by his agency dubbed "Rumor Control" which debunks misinformation about the election.
White House officials have asked for content to be edited or removed from the website, which has pushed back against numerous false claims about the election, including that Democrats are behind a mass election fraud scheme. In response, officials at the agency have refused to delete accurate information.
Sources told Reuters the White House was also angry about a post from Krebs rejecting a conspiracy theory that falsely claims an intelligence agency supercomputer and program, purportedly named Hammer and Scorecard, could have flipped votes nationally.
Krebs has said in Twitter posts that no such system exists, saying: "This is not a real thing, don’t fall for it."
On Thursday, Gabriel Sterling, the Voting System Implementation Manager in Georgia, where a hand count audit of the presidential election will begin Friday due to the narrow margin between President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden, cited the assessment from Krebs.
STERLING: "Hammer and Scorecard - this is him talking, not Gabe talking - is nonsense and a hoax. So, anybody claiming that things are being flipped by a super secret computer developed by the CIA is just not speaking...well, is speaking nonsense, I guess. I will quote Chris on that one."
Trump has yet to concede and has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud.
On Thursday, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an unequivocal response to those claims, saying in a statement: "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."
Krebs did not return messages seeking comment.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the White House have declined comment.
