On April 9, 2025, the White House (i.e., President Donald J. Trump) issued a MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.         

Its purpose: To target Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for potential arrest and prosecution. 

Krebs’ “crime”: Ensuring that the 2020 Presidential election was free of lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms.

Deprived of his expected support from Russian trolls and hackers, Trump lost. 

Now he wants “revenge.” 

Chris Krebs

Among the “charges” outlined in Trump’s memorandum:

“Krebs skewed the bona fide debate about COVID-19 by attempting to discredit widely shared views that ran contrary to CISA’s favored perspective.”

During 2020—Trump’s last year in office as President—COVID-19 ravaged the United States. At least 400,000 Americans died—many of them because they believed Trump’s claims that:

• His administration had it under control; and
• There was no need to protect oneself from it—such as by social distancing and wearing masks in public. 

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, in a moment of rare candor, once revealed his satanic ruthlessness to a group of fellow Bolsheviks: “To choose one’s victims, to prepare one’s plans minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed – there is nothing sweeter in the world.“

Joseph Stalin

On April 9, 2025, Trump revealed his intention to live by that belief. In his memorandum, he outlined his plans for revenge on Chris Krebs. 

“I hereby direct the heads of executive department and agencies (agencies) to immediately take steps consistent with existing law to revoke any active security clearance held by Christopher Krebs.

“I further direct the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, and all other relevant agencies to immediately take all action as necessary and consistent with existing law to suspend any active security clearances held by individuals at entities associated with Krebs, including SentinelOne, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”

Donald Trump

SentinelOne is an American cybersecurity company in Mountain View, California, where Krebs serves as Chief Intelligence and Public Policy Officer.

“I further direct the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with any other agency head, to take all appropriate action to review Krebs’ activities as a Government employee, including his leadership of CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency].“

“This review should identify any instances where Krebs’ conduct appears to have been contrary to suitability standards for Federal employees, involved the unauthorized dissemination of classified information, or contrary to the purposes and policies identified in Executive Order 14149 of January 20, 2025 (Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship).” 

Trump is speaking about the censorship of Right-wing speech, which is virtually non-existent. But he has no qualms about suppressing freedom of speech for his critics.

He blocked access by the Associated Press to White House events because it refused to bow to his demand that it refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” 

On April 9, District Judge Trevor McFadden ruled the administration’s restriction on AP journalists was “contrary to the First Amendment,” which guarantees freedom of speech.

The administration has appealed the verdict to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

According to Trump’s memorandum: 

“As part of that review, I direct a comprehensive evaluation of all of CISA’s activities over the last 6 years, focusing specifically on any instances where CISA’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies identified in Executive Order 14149.

“Upon completing these reviews, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall prepare a joint report to be submitted to the President, through the Counsel to the President, with recommendations for appropriate remedial or preventative actions to be taken to fulfill the purposes and policies of Executive Order 14149.”

Clearly, Trump seeks to find any plausibly legal excuse to destroy the man who dared come between him and his Russian backers in 2020—and who contradicted his lies about COVID and the election.

Donald Trump’s  ambition to become absolute dictator fits brilliantly into the goals of Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project.    

This is a collection of policy proposals to fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 Presidential election.

During the 2024 Presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly denied knowing anything about it—thus adding to the cascade of lies he spins almost every time he opens his mouth.

Established in 2022 by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants. 

Among Project 2025’s priorities:

• Replace tenured civil servants with thousands of political hacks to establish an absolute dictatorship under a Republican President.
• “Reform” the Department of Justice by making it the President’s personal law firm. 
• Make the director of the FBI personally accountable to the President—as the head of the KGB is personally accountable to Vladimir Putin.   

History-ignorant Americans are about to discover what it meant to live in the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin—where truth and integrity were punished and lies and treachery were rewarded.

On April 9, 2025, the White House (i.e., President Donald J. Trump) issued a MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.       

Its purpose was to target Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for potential arrest and prosecution. 

Krebs’ “crime”: Ensuring that the 2020 Presidential election was free of lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms.  

Krebs did his job so effectively that Americans elected former Vice President Joseph R. Biden instead of re-electing then-President Trump.

And for Trump-–newly reinstalled as President in 2025—this was the equivalent of treason.

Donald Trump

Among the “charges” outlined in Trump’s memorandum:

“These disgraceful actions have taken the form of coercive threats against the private sector — including major social media platforms — to suppress conservative or dissenting voices and distort public opinion.”

The two biggest and most influential social media platforms—Twitter (now X) and Facebook—are owned by avowedly Right-wing billionaires: Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. They gave Trump a huge megaphone of support during the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections.

After he incited a treasonous riot against Congress on January 6, 2021, both platforms briefly banned him from posting. But then both—fearing “retribution” if he became President again—once again gave him access to their audiences. 

Trump’s memorandum then moves from his general hates to his specific one: Chris Krebs.

“Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), is a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority. Krebs’ misconduct involved the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic.” 

And how did Krebs do this? By guaranteeing that the 2020 Presidential election was free of Russian trolls and hackers. Specifically:

Krebs’ to-do list included paper ballots:

“Paper ballots give you the ability to audit, to go back and check the tape and make sure that you got the count right. And that’s really one of the keys to success for a secure 2020 election. Ninety-five percent of the ballots cast in the 2020 election had a paper record associated with it. Compared to 2016, about 82%.

“That gives you the ability to prove that there was no malicious algorithm or hacked software that adjusted the tally of the vote, and just look at what happened in Georgia. Georgia has machines that tabulate the vote. They then held a hand recount and the outcome was consistent with the machine vote.”   

“CISA, under Krebs’ leadership, suppressed conservative viewpoints under the guise of combatting supposed disinformation, and recruited and coerced major social media platforms to further its partisan mission….”

There is absolutely no evidence to support this lie.

“Krebs, through CISA, promoted the censorship of election information, including known risks associated with certain voting practices.”

Krebs’ election-security duties included:

• Sharing intelligence from agencies such as the CIA and National Security Agency with local officials about foreign efforts at election interference.
• Ensuring that domestic voting equipment was secure.
• Attacking domestic misinformation head-on.

Chris Krebs

At his command lay the resources of a series of powerful Federal investigative agencies:

“We had the Department of Defense Cyber Command. We had the National Security Agency. We had the FBI. We had the Secret Service. We also had representatives from the Election Assistance Commission, which is the federal independent agency that supports the actual administration of elections.”

As a result, Krebs was widely praised for revamping the department’s cybersecurity efforts and increasing coordination with state and local governments. 

By all accounts—except Trump’s—the November 3, 2020 election went very smoothly. 

On November 12, to counter the growing chorus of lies from Trump and his Right-wing allies that the election had been stolen, Krebs put out the following statement:

“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” 

On November 17, Trump fired Chris Krebs.

Too cowardly to confront Krebs, Trump fired him by tweet—and accompanied the outrage with yet more lies:

“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.

Back to Trump’s memorandum/”indictment”:

“Similarly, Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.” 

Immediately after losing the 2020 Presidential election, Trump began spreading “The Big Lie”: That he had been defeated by massive voter fraud. And that this had been made possible through Dominion Voting Systems.

And soon Trump had the help of a major Right-wing propagandist to carry his lie nationwide: The Fox News Network.

On April 18, 2023, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $797 million to avert a wrongful defamation trial. Dominion’s lawsuit would have exposed how the network promoted lies about the 2020 presidential election—all the while knowing they were lies.   

So much for Trump’s claims of “widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.”   

In the United States of Donald Trump, protecting the right to legitimate elections can get you investigated—if not indicted.     

Case in point: Christopher Krebs, who prevented Russian trolls and hackers from sabotaging the 2020 Presidential election.

During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.

And where Internet trolls left off, Russian computer hackers took over.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote—65,853,514 to 62,984,828 for Trump. But in the United States, what counts in Presidential elections is the Electoral College vote.

And there Trump won: 304 to 227. 

What put him over the top in the Electoral College was the help he got from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin 

Пресс-служба Президента РФ, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Putin had good reason to assist Trump: Putin wanted the United States to ditch the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which has preserved Western Europe from Russian aggression since World War II. And Trump had often attacked America’s funding of NATO as a drain on the American economy.

As for Trump, he wanted something from Putin: He wanted to be President. For this, Putin could supply monies, Internet trolls to confuse voters with falsified news, and even the hacking of key voting centers.

So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.

And the point man for this was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by DHS.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, Krebs had received a B.A. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.

Chris Krebs

Krebs had served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft. 

In preparation for the 2020 Presidential election, Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. As he explained to Scott Pelley during a “60 Minutes” interview aired on November 29, 2020: 

“So we spent something on the order of three and a half years of gaming out every possible scenario for how a foreign actor could interfere with an election. Countless, countless scenarios.”   

What Krebs could not know was that, less than five years later, his dedication to ensuring a free democratic election would put him in the crosshairs of the Justice Department.

A Justice Department under the control of the man defeated for the Presidency in 2020: Donald J. Trump.   

On April 9, 2025, the White House (i.e., Trump) issued MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.

According to Wikipedia: “Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims, including during his first and second terms as President of the United States. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day.”

So it was fitting that Trump’s memorandum opened with an outright series of lies disguised as an indictment: 

“The Federal Government has a constitutional duty and a moral responsibility to respect and promote the free speech rights of Americans.

“Yet in recent years, elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate. 

“These disgraceful actions have taken the form of coercive threats against the private sector — including major social media platforms — to suppress conservative or dissenting voices and distort public opinion.

“Much of this censorship took place during a Presidential election with the apparent purpose of undermining the free exchange of ideas and debate.” 

When Donald Trump makes an accusation, it is nearly always a confession of a crime he has committed or plans to commit.  Thus, the above statements reflect exactly the agenda and practices of both the first Trump administration and the present one.

For example: “Elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate.“

Trump ordered Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to purge the U.S. Naval Academy Library of books that focus on race, gender, and sexuality, and historical books on racism and white supremacy. These include books on the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights and racism.

Thus, two copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf are available for checkout, while Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is not. 

Memorializing the Holocaust, Janet Jacob’s book on how female victims of the Holocaust have been portrayed, is gone. But The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail is still on the shelves. A 1973 novel which envisions a takeover of the Western world by immigrants from Third World countries, it has been embraced by white supremacists.