Trump Continues Federal Purge, Gutting Cyber Workers Who Combat Disinformation

The Trump administration has moved to push out a swathe of federal workers previously involved in combating election-related disinformation, according to three people familiar with the matter, amid allegations from congressional Republicans that their work unfairly targeted conservative speech online.

Roughly half a dozen employees from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who once worked in its Election Security and Resilience division were notified Thursday night they were being put on administrative leave, said the three people, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.

The move comes shortly after the installment of new DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, a close Trump ally. The former South Dakota governor told congressional Republicans in her confirmation hearing last month she shared their view that CISA should no longer be involved in efforts to combat the scores of online hoaxes peddled by the likes of Russia, China and Iran.

“As Secretary Noem stated during her confirmation hearing, CISA needs to refocus on its mission, and we are starting with election security,” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for Public Affairs at CISA, said in a statement.

McLaughlin added that the agency is “undertaking an evaluation” of how it handles election security, and “personnel who worked on mis-, dis-, and malinformation, as well as foreign influence operations and disinformation, have been placed on administrative leave.”

The ousters are the latest example of how the administration is targeting career government officials with prior connections, however tenuous, to efforts it disagrees with or that interfere with Trump’s agenda.

Among the employees who received the notice Thursday are two individuals who stopped working on “mis, dis-, and malinformation,” as the agency calls it, over a year ago, said one of the people. Another employee who was put on leave never actually worked on the issue at all, said the same person — while they were part of the ESR subdivision, their work entailed helping state and local election officials protect voting machines and county election offices from cyberattacks.

In 2018, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill establishing CISA to protect U.S. critical infrastructure, including voting systems.

But conservatives have taken issue with CISA’s approach to combating election disinformation and have accused the agency of unfairly targeting them in a way that amounted to government censorship. The Supreme Court ruled last year that CISA and other agencies were allowed to communicate with social media companies about disinformation issues, reversing a prior ruling that had frozen these communications for months.

The agency became the subject of Trump’s fury after CISA took steps to call out misinformation and disinformation during the 2020 presidential election. Former Director Chris Krebs put out a statement calling the election “the most secure in American history” and was fired by Trump shortly after.

CISA has subsequently ratcheted back its disinformation efforts in response to Republican outrage. Still, some Trump allies and GOP members of Congress have continued to attack the agency, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ken.), the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, even calling for the abolishment of the agency late last year.

It’s unclear what Trump’s plan is for the agency in his second term. He has yet to nominate anyone to replace former CISA Director Jen Easterly, who stepped down on Inauguration Day, and has not formally nominated or appointed individuals for other leading cybersecurity roles in the administration.