The presidential memorandum also orders the Department of Justice to open investigations into their actions while serving in government.
President Donald Trump revoked security clearances for two former officials, Miles Taylor and Christopher Krebs, on April 9.
Taylor served as a staffer in the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term and was accused of leaking classified information.
He penned an anonymous article in the New York Times in 2018, saying he was part of a “resistance inside the White House,” and published a book titled “A Warning” in 2019, describing himself as a senior Trump administration official.
He came out from under his pseudonym in 2020, openly endorsing President Joe Biden, and became a contributor for CNN.
The presidential memorandum called Taylor “a bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his government position.”
It dismissed his book as being filled with falsehoods.
“Taylor disclosed sensitive information obtained through unauthorized methods and betrayed the confidence of those with whom he served,” the memorandum said.
The order also called for the Department of Justice to review Taylor’s activities during his time as a government employee, to determine any instances where he was involved with unauthorized dissemination of classified information.
“I had no idea who this guy was,” Trump told reporters.
“I think it’s like a traitor, like it’s like spying,” he added.
Meanwhile, Krebs was the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), with the memorandum accusing him of weaponizing his position against free speech regarding the election and COVID-19.
Specifically, the order alleged that Krebs “suppressed conservative viewpoints under the guise of combatting purported misinformation, and recruited and coerced major social media platforms to further its partisan mission,” as well as “skewed the bona fide debate about COVID-19 by attempting to discredit widely shared views that ran contrary to CISA’s favored perspective.”
The order also accuses Krebs of promoting censorship of election information, including “falsely and baselessly den[ying] that the 2020 election was rigged.”
He will have any active clearance revoked, and the DOJ and other aspects of the government will conduct a review of CISA’s activities over the last six years to determine any instances where Krebs’s or CISA’s conduct appears to be contrary to the administration’s commitment to free speech and ending federal censorship.
“I think he said this is the safest election we’ve ever had, and yet, every day, you read in the papers about more and more fraud that’s discovered,” Trump said of Krebs.
“So we’ll find out whether or not it was a safe election, and if it wasn’t, he’s got a big price to pay.”
Krebs was fired in November 2020 after declaring that the election had been “the most secure in American history.”
“It was a very corrupt election,” Trump said.
The president used the moment to advocate for voting changes such as voter ID, paper ballots, and same-day voting.
Isabel van Brugen and Jack Phillips contributed to this report.