A Trump Lawyer Just Called For the Execution of Trump's Former Election Security Chief

A lawyer for the Trump campaign has called for the execution of Chris Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, because Krebs said the election was the “most secure in American history.” 

Joe diGenova is a former U.S. attorney who represented the president during Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. He is now part of Trump’s “elite strike force” of lawyers, who are pushing baseless conspiracy theories and whatever else they can think of to undermine President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in last month’s election.

DiGenova appeared on Monday afternoon on the pro-Trump Newsmax network, where he spent the segment breathlessly pushing electoral fraud conspiracy theories and promising the Trump campaign would produce evidence to back these wild claims.

Then the conversation switched to Krebs, who was fired by Trump last month after he said there was zero evidence of electoral fraud. Krebs appeared on “60 Minutes” on Sunday night, and reiterated that the election had been the most secure in history, something that apparently annoyed diGenova.

“Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity, that guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot,” diGenova said.

Host Howie Carr didn’t respond to diGenova’s dangerous comment, beyond an awkward chuckle, before changing the subject.

Krebs responded on Tuesday morning in an interview with NBC’s “Today” show, saying diGenova’s comment is “certainly more dangerous language, more dangerous behavior.” The former cybersecurity chief said he didn’t want to let the Trump campaign know how he was reacting to the threat, but said that he was considering legal action.

“I've got an exceptional team of lawyers that win in court, and I think they're probably going to be busy,” Krebs said.

DiGenova is part of a team of lawyers who have been backing up Trump’s own wild claims that the election was rigged by everything from fraudulent mail-in ballots to insecure voting machines and even Sharpie pens.

Despite all the bluster, the Trump campaign has yet to produce any credible evidence to back up its claims and has seen 39 lawsuits thrown out by courts across the country, while winning just one.

DiGenova, who has a history of spewing violent rhetoric, is not the first person linked to Trump to call for the killing of a public official. Last month Steve Bannon called for the beheading of FBI Director Christopher Wray and government infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The dangerous comments from diGenova and others within Trump’s circle have real-world consequences.

Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, who voted for Trump but has resisted GOP attempts to overturn Biden’s win there, has said he and his wife have received death threats from Trump supporters.

Government officials and fellow lawyers have condemned DiGenova’s comments, with some calling for his disbarment. Others have flagged the dangers posed by such inflammatory comments.

“Threats like these trigger an avalanche of them,” Lois Clark, chief executive of the Government Accountability Project, said in a statement. “They terrorize other whistleblowers into silence. It’s behavior befitting a mob attorney.”