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….