CISA is now being led by 15-year DHS veteran Brandon Wales; source says Wales wants to keep operating CISA's Rumor Control site, which debunked election misinfo
Five months before President Donald Trump fired him, federal cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs made a key addition to his leadership team …
PoliticoEric Geller
Context & Ripple Effects
CISA has been in limbo since sources reported in mid-November that Chris Krebs expected to be fired for refusing to delete content from the agency's Rumor Control site debunking election misinfo — a refusal Trump punished with dismissal. Handing the agency to Brandon Wales, a 15-year DHS veteran rather than an outside loyalist, is the first concrete answer to who runs CISA in the interim.
The source detail that Wales wants to keep operating Rumor Control is the real news: it signals the career staff intend to defend the exact program that cost Krebs his job, while the permanent directorship stays open until the Senate eventually confirms Jen Easterly months later.
First-order effects
Rumor Control keeps publishing under Wales despite the White House pressure that ended Krebs's tenure, preserving the agency's election-misinformation rebuttals through the post-election period.
Wales inherits an agency with no confirmed director, holding the line on programs while the search for Krebs's permanent replacement continues.
Second-order effects
A career-official caretaker lowers the odds of further purges inside CISA before the incoming administration installs its own team, including appointments like Chris DeRusha as US CISO coordinating policy across government.
Krebs's removal over Rumor Control becomes a public test case for how much political cost defending election-integrity content carries — one Krebs himself kept paying years later when he resigned from SentinelOne to challenge the White House freely.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, CISA's leadership becomes structurally exposed to election-cycle politics: the vacancy between Krebs's firing and Easterly's confirmation, and the later exodus of nearly all top division and regional leaders, show how quickly political retaliation hollows out an agency's bench.
The episode establishes misinformation-debunking as a recurring flashpoint for federal cybersecurity agencies, forcing each successive director to decide whether operating tools like Rumor Control is worth the personal and institutional risk.
The trend: US federal cyber leadership is being pulled between career-official continuity and White House political control, with election-misinformation rebuttal work as the recurring trigger.
ICMYI, my new profile of Brandon Wales, CISA's acting director, a @C_C_Krebs ally who is overwhelmingly seen as a steady hand for a chaotic time: https://www.politico.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Brandon Wales is now leading the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as it becomes the latest arm of the executive branch to take the brunt of the White House's post-election purge. https://www.politico.com/...
‘Absolute right guy for the job’: No other way to describe the government's new domestic cybersecurity chief, Brandon Wales. https://www.politico.com/...
“Trump's purge of CISA's leadership has unintentionally elevated the very official whom Krebs put in place to protect the agency in a situation like this” - @C_C_Krebs out there playing chess like Kasparov while his former boss is stumped at Go Fish 😂 https://twitter.com/...
Krebs knew what he was doing when he structured CISA. @C_C_Krebs is gone but a top deputy remains Trump can't easily get rid of. https://twitter.com/...
New: My profile of Acting CISA Director Brandon Wales, described by 7 current+former colleagues as the perfect person to take charge right now. Wales, a 15-yr veteran of DHS cyber, “is one of the smartest people I've ever worked with,” said @bsware. https://www.politico.com/... h…
The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud - including dead people voting, Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, “glitches” in the voting machines which changed...
...votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more. Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
ICYMI: On allegations that election systems were manipulated, 59 election security experts all agree, “in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” #Protect2020 https://twitter.com/...
It's all so exhausting. An endless stream of lies and conspiracies, amplified conservative media hacks and mostly met with silence from Republicans who know better. The damage he's doing is real. https://twitter.com/...
I'm told Chris Krebs' deputy, Matt Travis, has also RESIGNED tonight after White House made clear to him he would not be taking the helm of the agency. Brandon Wales, a career official and the third-highest ranking official at CISA, is expected to now serve as acting director.
CISA Deputy Director Matt Travis, the No. 2 official at the agency, resigned in the wake of Chris Krebs' firing. Travis resigned after the White House and Chad Wolf made clear he would not take the helm at CISA. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
I've said this before, but I'll say it again. There aren't many in government cybersecurity who have the full trust of the community. @CISAKrebs is one of those people. His firing has set back public-private partnership on cybersecurity by many years. 1/3 https://twitter.com/...
Chris Krebs did a lot of work this year to help state and local officials pull off remarkably free and fair elections with record turnout, under difficult circumstances. For this, he was fired by Donald Trump.