Trump Signs Memorandum Revoking Security Clearance of Former CISA Director Chris Krebs

President Donald Trump today signed a Presidential Memorandum today revoking any active security clearance currently held by Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who famously rumbled publicly with Trump over the latter's false allegations of election fraud during and after the 2020 presidential election.

Trump, at the end of his first presidential term, fired Krebs via a November 17 tweet, two weeks after losing his re-election bid to President Joe Biden, saying that Krebs' claims about the security of the election were inaccurate and accusing him of overstepping his authority as a government official.

The move to strip Krebs of his security clearance follows a string of similar moves made by the Trump administration to strip the clearances of anyone who has been deemed to be disloyal to Trump. This includes many top officials and advisors who initially served Trump during his first presidency before becoming vocal critics of him and his policies.

But the memorandum against Krebs goes further than this because it not only revokes any active security clearance held by Krebs, but also suspends active security clearances held by any employee of SentinelOne, the security firm that currently employs Krebs. The latter clearances are suspended "pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest," a fact sheet about the memorandum states. Krebs is currently chief public policy officer at the firm. Krebs did not respond to a question asking if he currently holds an active security clearance. SentinelOne – a company founded by three Israelis in 2013 with headquarters now based in California – released a statement indicating that fewer than 10 employees currently have security clearances and that it would cooperate with any government review of those clearances.

"In regard to the Executive Order dated April 9, 2025 focused on Chris Krebs in his prior role as a government employee, we will actively cooperate in any review of security clearances held by any of our personnel – currently less than 10 employees overall and only where required by existing government processes and procedures to secure government systems," the company wrote. "Accordingly, we do not expect this to materially impact our business in any way."

The memo Trump signed calls Krebs "a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his government authority" during his time leading CISA and calls for an investigation of Krebs' activities during his time as the leader of CISA and a government employee.

"The review will include a comprehensive evaluation of all of CISA’s activities over the last 6 years and will identify any instances where Krebs’ or CISA’s conduct appears to be contrary to the administration’s commitment to free speech and ending federal censorship, including whether Krebs’ conduct was contrary to suitability standards for federal employees or involved the unauthorized dissemination of classified information," the fact sheet states.

The invocation of federal censorship is noteworthy. It means the president is claiming he had a First Amendment right to claim to the American public that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and rife with fraud, and suggests that under Krebs' leadership CISA not only exceeded its authority in countering the claims but potentially violated the Constitution.

Krebs launched a counter-disinformation program at CISA during the 2020 presidential campaign to counteract misleading and false statements on social media and elsewhere about election fraud and the security and integrity of the nation's election systems. As part of this program, CISA launched a now-defunct rumor control web site on October 20, weeks before the election, to correct misleading and unsupported claims about the election, many of which were made by Trump and his supporters.

The security of the nation's election systems has long been in question – a number of security investigations and reports going back two decades have found significant and numerous security flaws with voting machines used by jurisdictions around the country. But many of the claims made during the 2020 presidential campaign went beyond facts about security risks to state categorically without evidence that the systems had been subverted to give Biden the election. Trump and his followers had also asserted that massive voter fraud had helped Biden win the election, but the claims were not supported by evidence.

In the presidential memorandum this week, the White House claimed that under Krebs, CISA "suppressed conservative viewpoints under the guise of combatting purported misinformation, and recruited and coerced major social media platforms to further its partisan mission."

It accuses Krebs and CISA of censoring legitimate election information, "including known risks associated with certain voting practices" and "falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen."

The memo also threw in two other alleged offenses, accusing CISA under Krebs' leadership of "covertly" working to "blind the American public to the controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop" and skewing the debate about COVID-19 by "attempting to discredit widely shared views" about the virus that contradicted CISA’s "favored perspective."

Updated April 10: To add statement from SentinelOne.