President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order, asking the Department of Justice to probe his former aides and security experts Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs. The two were a part of the 78-year-old's first administration. They later turned against the president, with Trump accusing them of being ‘guilty of treason’.
“Chris Krebs… this is a man who weaponized his position against free speech in the election context," Trump said. The president further added that the order ‘instructs your department of justice to investigate’ them.
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“I think it’s like a traitor," Trump said of Taylor. "It’s like spying…he wrote a book, Anonymous, and I always thought it was terrible. And now we have a chance to find out whether or not it was terrible.”
Krebs was Donald Trump's election security director during his first term. The president suggested that he was part of an effort to steal the 2020 election. The security expert repeatedly said there was no evidence of fraud that he could find after Joe Biden won.
Who are Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs?
Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs are former government officials who served during Donald Trump’s first administration and later became vocal critics of the Republican.
{{/usCountry}}Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs are former government officials who served during Donald Trump’s first administration and later became vocal critics of the Republican.
{{/usCountry}}Taylor is a national security expert who held several roles in the Trump administration, most notably as Chief of Staff at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2017 to 2019. Born in 1986 or 1987, Taylor began his career under President George W Bush, later working on Capitol Hill and at Google before joining DHS under Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. He anonymously authored a New York Times op-ed titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” under the pseudonym "Anonymous." The story criticized Trump's leadership.
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In 2019, Taylor resigned from DHS and published a book, ‘A Warning’.
Krebs is a cybersecurity expert and attorney who served as the first Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within DHS from November 2018 until November 17, 2020. Born in 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia, Krebs earned a law degree from George Mason University and built a career focused on cybersecurity, including stints at Microsoft and as a senior DHS advisor. At CISA, he oversaw efforts to secure US elections, notably the 2020 presidential election. After the election, Krebs publicly contradicted Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.