Trump's ill-timed firing of cybersecurity chief post-election could be 'valuable' evidence: law professor

Former President Donald Trump is facing likely imminent indictment in the January 6 investigation by special counsel Jack Smith, and the decision could come down in a matter of days. And one of the significant episodes that could legally implicate Trump in a deliberate plot to deprive people of their rights, said New York University law professor Ryan Goodman, is his move to fire cybersecurity official Chris Krebs after he vouched for the security of the 2020 election.

This comes on top of the context that Smith is investigating a meeting from early 2020 in which Trump privately praised election security measures, just months before calling those efforts fraudulent.

"So, Ryan, you heard what Olivia [Troye] said, that the tone coming out of this, we should be touting this as a success because they had something good," said anchor Erin Burnett. "Obviously, the context of COVID and those were dark days. But you hear her talking about this meeting. How significant could this evidence be, this meeting for Smith's case?"

"It could be very valuable because it does get into Donald Trump's mindset," said Goodman, who also previously served as special counsel to the Department of Defense. "If Smith can prove that Donald Trump understood that the election was safe and secure, which this evidence seems to suggest exactly that with multiple witnesses at the meeting, and then when it's not convenient for him to say that, instead he's trying to spin a narrative of an election that was stolen, he turns around and fires the very person that he wanted to give a press conference."

"Right," said Burnett.

"And that person, Chris Krebs, had actually said this was the safest election based on the very same computer systems that they presented to him in February of 2020," said Goodman. "So the idea that he somehow magically distrusts the system is a problem for him."

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