US election: Trump fires security official who rejected fraud claims

US president Donald Trump on Tuesday fired the government’s top election security official, who had rejected the president’s unsubstantiated claims of “massive” fraud in the vote he lost to Joe Biden. Trump announced on Twitter the termination “effective immediately” of Chris Krebs, who leads the agency that jointly declared “the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”

“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud,” Trump wrote in a tweet.“Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.”Krebs, who reportedly told friends last week he expected to be removed, appeared to confirm it in a tweet on his personal account.

Krebs was in charge of fending off possible foreign and domestic hacker intrusions into myriad voting machines, sorting and counting machines, databases and other systems that states and localities rely on to tally ballots.Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Krebs and his team had “worked diligently to safeguard our elections.”