A lawyer for President Donald Trump said Monday evening that a former DHS official who’s debunked myths about election fraud should be “drawn and quartered” and “shot.”
And on Tuesday morning, the former official — the recent director of DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs — said he was exploring his legal options in response to the comment.
The Trump attorney, Joe diGenova, is a regular pundit on right-wing television networks. He said he’d like Krebs to be killed in an interview Monday evening on Newsmax.
The former DHS official, diGenova said, is “a class-A moron” who “should be drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot.”
Krebs, who was fired via presidential tweet this month for debunking myths about election fraud, responded a few hours later during an interview on the Today Show.
“The way I look at it is, we are a nation of laws and I plan to take advantage of those laws,” he said. “I’ve got an exceptional team of lawyers that win in court, and I think they’re probably going to be busy.”
Krebs added to NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie that his legal team would be “taking a look at all our available opportunities.”
Guthrie asked if Krebs was worried about his safety, given threats he’s faced for speaking out about election security.
“I’m not going to give them the benefit of knowing how I’m reacting to this,” Krebs said. “They can know that there are things coming, though.”
The Trump campaign did not return TPM’s request for comment. The team has already shed one lawyer, Sidney Powell, after she suggested that Republican leaders in Georgia had been bought off by a voting machine company.
I look forward to Mayor Giuliani spearheading the legal effort to defend OUR RIGHT to FREE and FAIR ELECTIONS! Rudy Giuliani, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, a truly great team, added to our other wonderful lawyers and representatives!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2020
DiGenova was among the lawyers on stage at a wild Nov. 19 press conference in which Giuliani, Powell and fellow Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis threw insane conspiracy theories against the wall to see what would stick.
