Trump Signs Orders Punishing Those Who Opposed His 2020 Election Lies

By Chris Cameron

President Trump on Wednesday signed executive orders punishing two officials from his first administration and an elite law firm, continuing a campaign of retribution that he has gleefully carried out since his inauguration.

Two executive orders targeted Christopher Krebs, who as a senior cybersecurity official oversaw the securing of the 2020 presidential election, and Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Mr. Trump’s first term and anonymously wrote a high-profile opinion article for The New York Times in 2018. Among other measures, the orders directed Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to investigate the former officials and report their findings to the White House.

A third order targeted the law firm Susman Godfrey with many of the same sanctions that Mr. Trump has applied to other law firms that had taken on cases or causes he did not like. In 2023, Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to resolve a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 election. Susman Godfrey represented Dominion, a manufacturer of voting machines that lawyers allied with Mr. Trump attacked with outlandish claims about widespread voting fraud.

The executive orders reflected Mr. Trump’s desire for political payback. Mr. Trump has fixated on punishing — among others — elected Republicans and officials in his administration who have defied him or later opposed him.

Mr. Trump has also sought to rewrite the history of his defeat in 2020, and has continued to repeat his lie that the election was stolen from him. Mr. Krebs, leading the agency tasked with protecting election machinery from foreign interference, shot down many of Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud, and Mr. Trump fired Mr. Krebs days after his loss. Mr. Trump has continued to harbor deep resentments against the agency.

“This guy, Krebs, was saying ‘oh the election was great,’” Mr. Trump said Wednesday as he signed the order. He added, of Mr. Krebs,:“He’s the fraud. He’s a disgrace.”

The executive order punishing Mr. Krebs referred to Mr. Trump’s debunked claims, asserting that Mr. Krebs had “denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.”

Apparently referring to the Dominion defamation suit, Mr. Trump’s order accused Susman Godfrey of spearheading “efforts to weaponize the American legal system and degrade the quality of American elections,” and attacked the firm’s diversity efforts, as well as its representation of other clients whom Mr. Trump disagreed with.

In a statement, Susman Godfrey said that “there is no question that we will fight this unconstitutional order.” Mr. Krebs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The order punishing Mr. Taylor accused him, without evidence, of “illegally” publishing classified conversations in a book he wrote after his opinion article in The Times, adding that “this conduct could properly be characterized as treasonous and as possibly violating the Espionage Act.”

In a statement, Mr. Taylor said that the executive order punishing him had been expected.

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

The orders revoked security clearances for Mr. Krebs and Mr. Taylor and their known associates — specifying that people associated with the University of Pennsylvania, where Mr. Taylor has taught a class on “the future of conservatism,” and SentinelOne, the cybersecurity firm Mr. Krebs works at, would have their clearances suspended for their connections to the two former officials.

The orders also directed “calls for a review,” according to the White House, into the actions of Mr. Krebs and Mr. Taylor during their time in the first Trump administration, searching for — among other potential wrongdoing — the “unauthorized dissemination of classified information.”