Ex-CISA chief fires back after Trump attorney's threat: 'I am not going to be intimidated'

Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the United States Department of Homeland Security, has once again affirmed the integrity of the 2020 election.

Despite backlash from President Donald Trump, along with his campaign, legal team, and allies, Krebs defended his work within the federal agency in an editorial published Tuesday by the Washington Post. According to Krebs, the U.S. national security agencies had a very clear mission during the 2020 election: protect America's democracy.

"Across the nation's security agencies, there was universal acknowledgment that such foreign election interference could not be allowed to happen again. The mission was clear: Defend democracy and protect U.S. elections from threats foreign and domestic."

Pushing back against Trump's widespread voter fraud claims, Krebs made it clear that election security was unprecedented for the 2020 election.

"The 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history," Krebs said. "This success should be celebrated by all Americans, not undermined in the service of a profoundly un-American goal."

He also outlined how the federal agency prepared for the election. With heightened concerns about the possibility of domestic and international election interference, national security agencies went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure the country's election systems and integrity were secured.

"With the advantage of time to prepare for the 2020 election, we got to work," Krebs said, adding, "My team at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, had primary responsibility for working with state and local election officials and the private sector to secure their election infrastructure — including the machines, equipment and systems supporting elections — from hacking. (Other agencies handle fraud or other criminal election-related activity.) The Russian assault in 2016 had not included hacking voting machines, but we couldn't be sure that Moscow or some other bad actor wouldn't try it in 2020."

Krebs also touched on the dangerous remarks made by Trump campaign attorney Joseph DiGenova as he made it clear he is not deterred by threats.

He wrote, "On Monday, a lawyer for the president's campaign plainly stated that I should be executed. I am not going to be intimidated by these threats from telling the truth to the American people."