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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Ax Files with your host David Axelrod.

As the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs was on the point in trying to ensure the security of the 2020 election.

And it was that work and his defense of the integrity of the results after the election that led to his summary dismissal by President Trump.

We sat down this week to talk about past and future threats to the election process and what it means to our democracy. Here's that conversation.

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Chris Krebs, it's good to see you again. Welcome to the Ax Files. You're obviously well known for the work that you did for the government and around the elections.

And we're going to have plenty to talk about there. But I'm interested sort of in what people don't know about you. And so I just want to go through a little biography here and ask you about the Krebs and your roots.

All I know is that you grew up in the South and a whole bunch of you went to the University of Virginia.

That's right. I am the third generation UVA and my grandfather from Birmingham, Alabama, went back in the 20s or so and then my dad, he went as well.

And then my older brother went, my I've got uncles and aunts and God willing, my children all. How far back do the Krebs go in Alabama?

And the South and so on. So I, oh gosh, this was back in middle school. I think I did the the the family research and the history.

They actually came in through Pascagula, Mississippi. And there's a fort called Krebs Fort. They also called the old Spanish fort.

And that was back Hugo Ernesto Krebs came in from the it was actually the Alcés region. So Regents a little French German thing going on. But it's the 1800s mid 1800s, I think.

Pre civil war, post civil war.

In fact, there is a, you know, it's almost a national treasure type, claim back in family history that that one of my ancestors actually invented the cotton gin first, BD.

I Whitney to the game. But why did Whitney get all the accolades?

I think it's probably had a better patent attorney. And did you, did you were your folks engaged in the war on the Confederate side or not that I've discovered in our research, both my, you know, eventually they moved into Alabama.

That was from Birmingham, my mom grew up in Northwest Alabama. So Mo Brooks territory, Florence, Alabama. She was born though in Phoenix City, which is right down southeast Alabama right across the river from Columbus, Georgia.

And you, what does your folks do?

So I grew up in Atlanta and my dad was in various roles in the financial services industry. And also it, it a prior point was involved in the heavy equipment industry. So forklifts and construction equipment. And so a little bit this, a little bit of that. And my mom took care of us much to her.

How many of us were up. So I had older brother, younger brother. And so everybody has since kind of migrated up the Eastern seaboard and everybody's somewhere in Virginia right now.

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