Trump's fired election-security chief compared the president's false claims about voter fraud to Russian disinformation

• Former US election-security chief Chris Krebs has compared President Donald Trump's baseless claims of a rigged election to disinformation spread by hostile foreign powers to undermine US democracy.
• "One of the questions we asked: 'What would we do if the Russians were doing this?'" Krebs told Axios of how he responded to Trump's groundless claims while working as the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
• Trump fired Krebs on November 18 after Krebs dismissed the president's allegations of voter fraud and said that the 2020 election was the most secure in US history.

Chris Krebs, the former top US election-security official, has described President Donald Trump's baseless claims of voter fraud to Russian disinformation designed to corrode faith in US democracy.

In an interview with Axios, Krebs was asked for his view on Trump, who on November 18 fired him from his position as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security. Krebs had rebutted the president's claim that the result of the 2020 election was tainted by widespread ballot fraud.

"The caller was inside the house," Krebs told Axios' Jonathan Swan. "The president is a big part of the disinformation that's coming out there about the rigged election, but there are absolutely others."

He went on to describe how he coped with Trump's attempts to undermine faith in the integrity of the election while he was still working for the administration: "One of the questions we asked: 'What would we do if the Russians were doing this?'"

"The oath that we pledged coming into office as a federal official is that you uphold and defend the Constitution from threats foreign and domestic. We upheld our oath, carried it out."

When asked by Swan if Trump is domestic threat, Krebs replied: "There is disinformation that he is spreading. I mean, disinformation is one type of threat."

Since being fired, Krebs has continued to debunk Trump's assertions that the election was rigged - claims for which neither the president nor his legal team have produced convincing evidence.

Krebs' criticisms of the president have led to a violent backlash and threats from Trump supporters, and Trump campaign attorney Joe DiGenova faced widespread condemnation last week after telling a radio show that Krebs should be shot.

While Russian intelligence agencies and trolls were the main spreaders of disinformation in the 2016 election, experts told The Guardian in November that the biggest source of election disinformation in the 2020 cycle was the president and his allies.

Read more: Meet Donald Trump's new nemeses: The 15 prosecutors and investigators from New York who are primed to pepper the ex-president with history-making civil and criminal probes

Russian President Vladimir Putin has seized on Trump's election fraud claims to criticize US democracy and justify his refusal to recognize President-elect Joe Biden's victory.

In the Axios interview, Krebs called on Republicans to stand up against Trump's election fraud claims.

"I actually think that democracy's quite fragile," he said. "And when the institutions themselves are under attack from the inside, as you said, that's pretty close to an existential issue."