Trump Orders Justice Dept. to Probe Officials Who Opposed Him in First Term

The Washington Post

16:06 JST, April 11, 2025

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed sweeping presidential memorandums targeting two former government officials who opposed his actions in his first term – his latest effort to use the powers of the presidency to punish people and institutions who have challenged him.

In the Oval Office, Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, a former homeland security official. Taylor penned an anonymous 2018 New York Times op-ed titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” and an anonymous 2019 book that chronicled his observations and concerns during Trump’s first term in office. He revealed his authorship in 2020 and publicly campaigned against Trump’s reelection.

Trump also revoked security clearances for Krebs, Taylor and any entities associated with them, including the University of Pennsylvania and the cybersecurity firm SentinelOne.

“I said this would happen,” Taylor wrote on social media Wednesday evening. “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”

Krebs did not respond to requests for comment. SentinelOne Vice President Craig VerColen told The Washington Post that the company would cooperate with any government inquiry and that fewer than 10 employees had security clearances. “We do not expect this to materially impact our business in any way,” he said.

While signing the memorandums, Trump reasserted his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, claiming without evidence that “more and more fraud” is reported every day.

Trump fired Krebs in November 2020, after the cybersecurity official’s agency issued a statement calling the election “the most secure in American history.” Krebs used similar words to describe the election shortly after his firing in a December 2020 op-ed he wrote for The Post. The election “should be celebrated by all Americans, not undermined in the service of a profoundly un-American goal,” he said at the time. That month, he also sued Trump’s campaign and one of its lawyers for defamation.

In the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump repeated his unfounded assertions.

“We’ll find out whether or not it was a safe election,” he said.

“And if it wasn’t, he’s got a big price to pay,” he added, referring to Krebs.

Matt Blaze, a longtime election security expert, was one of 59 election security specialists who signed a joint statement rejecting the notion of computer fraud in the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. In a social media post Wednesday, he said: “U.S. election infrastructure isn’t perfect and there’s still work to do to make it more secure. But there is simply no credible evidence that the 2020 election outcome was altered through technical attacks, despite exhaustive scrutiny.”

Sen. Angus King Jr. (I-Maine), one of several chairs of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission that was tasked with formulating a strategy to defend the United States against cyberattacks, denounced Trump’s targeting of Krebs as a “terrible misuse of the President’s authority.”

“Chris Krebs’ crime appears to be telling the truth, in saying the 2020 election’s infrastructure was secure – and it was,” he said in a statement. “To take an action like this, which appears to be straight-up vengeance, is dangerous because of the message it sends to anyone in the federal government that tells the truth that you’ll lose your clearance, be slandered by the President, and investigated.”

Trump has made similar moves targeting law firms that worked on litigation against him. In March, federal judges temporarily blocked parts of his executive orders sanctioning two of the firms he has tried to punish. Last week, more than 500 law firms denounced his actions in a court filing, calling it an abuse of power that endangers the rule of law.