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Trump Lawyer: Former DHS Senior Official Should Be Executed

During Newsmax call-in Joe diGenova said Chris Krebs should be put to death.
November 30, 2020
Trump Lawyer: Former DHS Senior Official Should Be Executed
UNITED STATES - NOVEMBER 19: Rudolph Giuliani, left, and Joseph diGenova, center, attorneys for President Donald Trump, conduct a news conference at the Republican National Committee on lawsuits regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election on Thursday, November 19, 2020. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

On Monday President Trump’s campaign lawyer and former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova said that fired Trump cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs should be executed for saying that the election was the “most secure in United States history.”

DiGenova, appearing on the Howie Carr show, which simulcasts on Newsmax, took aim at Krebs as an aside during a wheels-off segment full of false claims about how the United States election had been rigged.

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

This is not just a random Parler troll trying to get attention. This is an attorney speaking on behalf of the President of the United States’ re-election campaign. And while it may read like a macabre joke, the direct nature of diGenova’s comments make it impossible to interpret as anything other than a real wish/threat against a public servant for offering truthful testimony.

Carr responded to the statement with an awkward pause and a laugh and then changed the subject. Some shit is so weird that it even makes Newsmax people uncomfortable.

DiGenova’s execution wishcasting comes on the heels of a Krebs interview with 60 Minutes in which he debunked the Trump team’s outlandish and conspiratorial claims about the election. Krebs is a lifelong Republican who Trump put in charge of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which had oversight of election security. (Trump fired Krebs via tweet.)

In addition to threatening Krebs, over the course of the interview diGenova made ominous and false suggestions about “circuit breakers” shutting down on election night in multiple states, which allowed for vote fraud; millions of votes showing up in dump trucks, tow trucks, and vans without detection; and he called on state legislatures to have the “cojones” to overturn the results of the election.

In other words: Just a normal day for Elite Strike Force.

Update 8:05 P.M. John Whitehouse at Media Matters obtained the video of the exchange, you can watch it here.

Tim Miller

Tim Miller is The Bulwark’s writer-at-large and the author of the best-selling book Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell. He was previously political director for Republican Voters Against Trump and communications director for Jeb Bush 2016.