WASHINGTON, D.C., July 7, 2023—Former Washington State Secretary of State Kim Wyman (R) will be leaving her federal appointment as Lead Senior Election Security Advisor for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to pursue an opportunity in the private sector.
I thank @CISAJen for giving me the opportunity to be part of this important mission! Cait will be a great partner to election officials as they prepare for 2024. A big announcement is coming in a few weeks, as soon as the contract is finalized! Stay tuned. https://t.co/4VoAvmC3V4
— Kim Wyman (@KimWyman12) June 30, 2023
“I want to thank Kim Wyman, who will be departing CISA at the end of July for an opportunity in a private sector,” CISA Director Jen Easterly announced on June 30. “Kim has been an invaluable Senior Election Security Lead over the past year and a half, strengthening our partnerships across the election community and maturing our operations.”
In her new role, Kim Wyman will remain as an informal advisor to her former boss, Easterly, and the CISA, the statement reads. Cait Conley, Senior Advisor to Director Easterly, will take on Wyman’s responsibilities at the CISA.
“It has been an honor to lead CISA’s election security efforts and to work side-by-side with so many talented and dedicated colleagues,” said Wyman. “I thank Director Easterly for the opportunity to support election officials in this role and to be part of this important mission. I am proud of the team and what we’ve already been able to accomplish. I have worked with Cait for the past several years in this election security space and know that CISA is in good hands with Cait joining the effort going forward.”
Wyman announced on October 26, 2021, that she accepted an appointment within the Biden Administration to serve as the Senior Election Security Lead for CISA, the nation’s lead for cyber, infrastructure, and election security. At the time of her resignation, she was only elected Republican to an Executive Office on the West Coast outside of Alaska.
Then-Senator Steve Hobbs (D-Lake Stevens) was appointed by Governor Jay Inslee to fill the vacancy left by Wyman’s resignation a month later.
The CISA has recently come under immense criticism for allegedly colluding with Big Tech and government-funded third parties to conduct censorship of Americans’ speech on social media by proxy and then attempting to cover up these activities.
According to the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government report entitled, “The Weaponization of CISA: How a ‘Cybersecurity’ Agency Colluded with Big Tech and ‘Disinformation’ Partners to Censor Americans. The report details how:
- CISA considered the creation of an anti-misinformation “rapid response team” capable of physically deploying across the United States.
- CISA moved its censorship operation to a CISA-funded non-profit after CISA and the Biden Administration were sued in federal court, implicitly admitting that its censorship activities are unconstitutional.
- CISA wanted to use the same CISA-funded non-profit as its mouthpiece to “avoid the appearance of government propaganda.”
- Members of CISA’s advisory committee agonized that it was “only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work.”
- In response to mounting public scrutiny, CISA scrubbed its website of references to its domestic surveillance and censorship activities.
CISA was originally founded in 2018 to be an ancillary agency within the Department of Homeland Security designed to protect “critical infrastructure” and safeguard against cybersecurity threats. Over the last five years, the House committees ongoing investigation concludes that the CISA is acting as an illegal intelligence agency.
“CISA is not a law enforcement agency and is not authorized to act as an intelligence agency. But, in practice, that is how CISA has behaved, arrogating to itself the authority to conduct surveillance of Americans on social media. CISA expanded its unconstitutional practice by developing an elaborate social media censorship apparatus spanning multiple organizations, in order to facilitate the censorship of Americans’ political speech both directly and by proxy. There is no constitutionally viable legal authority that allows CISA to engage in this or any other kind of censorship. Thus, not only does CISA’s conduct violate the First Amendment, it also disregards the basic principle of the separation of powers, which prohibits agencies from acting outside of their congressionally delegated sphere.”
On Tuesday, July 4, 2023, U.S. District Chief Judge Terry Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting “several federal agencies and officials of the Biden administration from working with social media companies” about protect speech, AP reports.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a press briefing on Wednesday that the Biden administration disagrees with the judge’s ruling and is weighing its options.
Author: Mario Lotmore
