Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at the Department of Homeland Security, indicated Tuesday he would likely take legal action in response to comments from Trump campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova that seemed to be advocating violence against Krebs.
DiGenova said during an interview on Newsmax’s “The Howie Carr Show” on Monday that Krebs, who was fired by President Donald Trump last month for contradicting Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, “should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”
Indeed, diGenova’s comments seemed to imply that not only Krebs, but that anyone who contradicted the unproven notion that the election was rife with fraud deserved a similar fate.
“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,” diGenova said.
The following morning, Krebs, appearing on NBC’s “TODAY” show, responded to those comments, implying that he would be taking legal action against diGenova for his words.
“It’s certainly more dangerous language, more dangerous behavior. And the way I look at it is that we are a nation of laws, and I plan to take advantage of those laws,” Krebs explained. “I’ve got an exceptional team of lawyers that win in court, and I think they’re probably going to be busy.”
Krebs was fired from his position at CISA after he directly rebuked Trump’s words about the election. Rather than agreeing with Trump’s wrongful insinuations that his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden was due to it being rigged or stolen from him, Krebs, in his role as CISA director, issued a joint statement with other agencies calling the election “the most secure in American history.”
Shortly after, Trump removed Krebs from his position.
“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud – including dead people voting, Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, ‘glitches’ in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more,” Trump alleged in a statement, providing no proof for the allegations he included in his justification for terminating Krebs from his role.
This past weekend on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Krebs expressed no regrets over his decision to refute the president’s assertions.
“There was no indication or evidence that there was any sort of hacking or compromise of election systems on, before or after November 3,” Krebs said during a segment on the program.
Immediately afterward, Trump on Sunday again tweeted unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
“Our 2020 Election, from poorly rated Dominion to a Country FLOODED with unaccounted for Mail-In ballots, was probably our least secure EVER!” Trump wrote, distorting the same words Krebs used in his joint statement while still the head of CISA.
While Trump continues to push ahead with these unfounded claims, his legal team has been unable to convince courts that widespread fraud took place. Most of the cases the team has brought before judges have been dismissed, some in embarrassing ways — including a recent opinion from the United States Third District Court of Appeals, which unanimously ruled against Trump over the Thanksgiving weekend.
“Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so,” Judge Stephanos Bibas, who was appointed by Trump himself, wrote in the opinion. “Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
Polling has also shown that most Americans believe the election was conducted in an honest way, although distrust in the outcome is higher than in past years. When asked in a recent Economist/YouGov poll whether they had confidence that the election was held fairly, 39 percent of voters overall said they had “only a little” confidence or “none at all.”
That rate is higher than usual, but is likely being driven upward due to Republicans buying into Trump’s false narratives. While 73 percent of GOP voters said they couldn’t trust the election results, a majority of independent voters in the poll said they trusted the outcome at least a moderate amount, with 39 percent of independents saying they trusted it more than moderately. A majority of Democratic respondents in the poll said they trusted the outcome a “great deal” or “quite a bit.”
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