As Trump Pushes Election Falsehoods, His Cybersecurity Agency Pushes Back

Efforts to protect U.S. elections from disinformation are proceeding amid reports that the head of the agency in the Department of Homeland Security that oversees election security expects to be fired soon by the White House.

Christopher Krebs, director of DHS' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, spearheaded an agency campaign to counter rumors about voter fraud and election irregularities.

It was intended primarily to target foreign disinformation but has ended up instead rebutting many of the rumors and baseless allegations about the election being spread by President Trump and his campaign, and it has apparently drawn the ire of the White House.

As of Friday, Krebs was still on the job, and CISA officials held a regularly scheduled meeting with private sector members of a coordinating council set up after the 2016 election to work with the agency to protect U.S. elections against cyberattacks and other disruptions.

That council, along with a separate one representing state and local elections officials, put out a joint statement Thursday calling the 2020 election "the most secure in American history." It added, in boldface, that "there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."