Trump fires top cybersecurity official who debunked voter fraud claims

President Trump tweeted on Tuesday evening that he has fired Christopher Krebs, the head of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who has been debunking conspiracy theories about voter fraud since Election Day.

Trump has been spreading multiple baseless claims about the election, including that it was "rigged" by Democrats and there was mass voting by dead people. In his tweet about Krebs, Trump claimed that it was "inaccurate" for Krebs to say the election was secure, and "therefore, effective immediately," Krebs has been terminated. Last week, Krebs told people close to him that due to his efforts to debunk disinformation, he believed he would soon be fired, Reuters reports.

Last week, top cybersecurity officials with the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council released a joint statement saying there is "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." In fact, they declared, the 2020 presidential election was "the most secure in American history."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.