Sacked election security official calls fraud allegations “nonsense”; Trump calls system an ‘international joke’

Former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Chris Krebs strongly defended the security of the 2020 election on Sunday following his dismissal by President Trump, as the president criticized the report on Twitter and called out claimed that US election security is a joke. “

Krebs appeared on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” just under two weeks after his unceremonious resignation from his job. At the time of the dismissal, Trump said in a tweet that a claim Krebs made to defend US electoral security was “grossly inaccurate.” In that tweet, Trump claimed “that there were massive irregularities and fraud – including dead people voting, ballot-observers banned from polling stations” and more.

The dismissal immediately drew backlash from many members of Congress, including Republicans, and from Krebs himself, who repeatedly said in comments online that there was “still no proof that electoral systems and votes have been manipulated “. He doubled down on those allegations on Sunday.

“There is no foreign power reversing the votes. There is no national actor reversing the votes. I did it right. We did it right. It was a sure election. “Krebs said.

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He also accused Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani of “undermining democracy” with repeated comments he made in claiming that there was massive voter fraud in several states.

“It was upsetting because what I saw was an apparent attempt to undermine confidence in the election, to confuse people, to scare people,” Krebs said of a lecture press release in which Giuliani appeared alongside lawyer Sidney Powell, whom the Trump campaign has since kept himself from. “And that was, again, for me, a press conference that I – it didn’t make sense. What he was actively doing was undermining democracy. And that’s dangerous.”

Trump, however, lambasted the news program in a tweet Sunday night and repeated some of his previous claims about mail-in ballots and Dominion, a company that manufactures counting systems.

“. @ 60Minutes never asked us to comment on their ridiculous, one-sided election security story, which is an international joke,” Trump said. “Our 2020 election, from a poorly rated Dominion to a country FLOODED with unaccounted mail ballots, was probably the least secure of all!”

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Dominion has firmly defended its systems against the claims of the president and his supporters. He has denied a wide variety of accusations, including that he has ties to foreign countries, that his systems have changed voices, that there have been software issues and more. It is further noted that, as its systems add up the votes on paper ballots, the results can be recounted by hand, as has happened in Georgia.

“Listen, when a voter votes on a Dominion machine, he fills out a ballot on a touchscreen. He receives a printed copy which he then gives to a local election official for safekeeping. Electronic interference has taken place, the electronically reported tally would not match the printed ballots. And in every instance where we have looked – in Georgia, across the country – the printed ballot, the gold standard in election security, matched the electronic count, “Dominion spokesman Michael Steel said in an interview on” America’s News Headquarters. “

Krebs also noted the fact that multiple recounts of paper ballots produced results consistent with the earlier counts.

“It gives you the chance to prove that there was no malicious algorithm or pirated software that adjusted the vote count, and just look at what happened in Georgia,” Krebs said of paper ballots. “Georgia has machines that total the vote. They then did a manual recount and the result was consistent with the machine’s vote.”

Krebs added, “This tells you that there was no manipulation of the vote on the tally side of the machine. And so, in my opinion, it demystifies some of those sensational claims … It’s a nonsense.”

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However, there was some crackdown on Krebs from inside the government. A senior Department of Homeland Security official told Fox News after his dismissal that Krebs was “out of his way” in some of his election security statements. Specifically, the official said that a statement released by Krebs saying there was no evidence “that a voting system suppressed or lost votes, changed votes or was compromised in any way. or “was too broad because allegations of electoral fraud are adjudicated by local, state and federal authorities. law enforcement, not CISA.

Nonetheless, Krebs in the “60 Minutes” interview reiterated that Americans should be confident in the outcome of the election as legal challenges to the election results by the president and his allies continue to flounder in the courts.

“The recounts are consistent with the initial tally, and for me, this is further proof, it is confirmation that the systems used in the 2020 election worked as intended, and that the American people should have confidence in 100% in his vote, ”Krebs said.

Jake Gibson of Fox News contributed to this report.