The special counsel investigating former president Donald Trump‘s “rigged” 2020 election claims has subpoenaed Trump White House staffers who may have been involved in the firing of Christopher Krebs, the administration’s top cybersecurity official during the 2020 election.
Krebs’ agency judged the controversial election “the most secure in American history”—and since this opinion went directly against Trump‘s claims of the election being “rigged”, it seems Krebs was given the axe in retribution.
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Special Counsel Investigating Firing Of White House Advisor
Investigators for the special counsel are looking to determine Trump's reasoning for the firing of Krebs, in addition to creating a timeline events leading up to the January 26th riots on the Capitol. The subpoenas relating to the Krebs situation were sent to Trump staffers about two weeks ago.
Former president Trump fired Krebs after his agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, released a statement soon after the 2020 election saying, "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." Less than a week after the statement was made public, Krebs was terminated.
During testimony regarding the January 6th attack for the House special committee, Krebs detailed a "skepticism" from Trump's allies regarding his "loyalty to the president." According to The New York Times, a group within the Presidential Personnel Office were looking to "find and fire people perceived as disloyal to Mr. Trump within the federal bureaucracy." Krebs was targeted due to his perceived disloyalty, and the personnel office even drafted a document outlining reasons to distrust him. This allegedly led directly to Krebs' dismissal.
Trump Staff Instituted 'Loyalty Test' To Government Hires
Among the details uncovered by the special counsel investigation was a questionnaire drafted by Trump officials for government hires that asked questions like "What part of Candidate Trump’s campaign message most appealed to you and why?" The memo has become a subject of interest in the investigation, which is attempting to understand the scope of so-called "loyalty tests" being deployed in the Trump White House.
The investigation is also seeking to establish how the aforementioned personnel office interacted with the Justice Department in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election.
According to The New York Times, "In his final weeks in office, Mr. Trump grew increasingly frustrated with the department’s leaders as one after another rebuffed his pressure on them to falsely declare that large-scale voter fraud had occurred in swing states, such as Georgia, that Mr. Trump had lost to Mr. Biden...Jeffrey B. Clark, the acting head of the civil division, was the one senior Justice Department official who embraced Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn President Biden’s victory." The investigation has apparently found that Trump considered making Clark Attorney General due to this perceived "loyalty."
Clark has also been a focus of the investigation, including in connection with Trump's efforts to reverse the 2020 election results.
