A top lawyer for Donald Trump called on national television yesterday for the execution of Chris Krebs, the former U.S. cybersecurity chief in charge of protecting the 2020 election from cyberattacks. The president fired Krebs, a lifelong Republican that he appointed, after Krebs described the 2020 election as “the most secure in the country’s history.”
Trump had announced the firing via Twitter on Nov. 17 in a post that included claims that the election was rigged to guarantee he would lose. Twitter flagged that post as containing “disputed” information.
In an interview on the right-wing Howie Carr Show, Trump lawyer Joe diGenova called Krebs a “moron” for saying the election was secure and said he should be killed.
“Anybody who thinks that this election went well like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity—that guy is a class A moron,” diGenova said. “He should be drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot.”
Carr is a host on Newsmax, an extreme right-wing network that has long touted Trump’s racism and xenophobia.
Krebs responded to diGenova’s comments during an interview with NBC’s TODAY show, saying he’s examining his legal options regarding the threats. “It’s certainly more dangerous language, more dangerous behavior, and the way I look at is that we are a nation of laws, and I plan to take advantage of those laws,” he said.
The president and his allies have done more than just lodge attacks against Krebs and others who have spoken out against his false claims of election fraud.
He has, of course, endangered democracy with his lies about the election and by refusing to concede to President-elect Joe Biden, who beat Trump by more than six million votes and has a majority in the Electoral College of 306 to Trump’s 232.
On top of his continuing unconstitutional attempt to overturn the election and sending out his lawyer to make death threats, Trump has Attorney General Bill Barr in on the act lately with Justice Department announcements that it is calling for the reinstitution of firing squads and electrocution as acceptable methods of carrying out death sentences.
And this isn’t the first time one of the president’s allies has called for someone they consider Trump’s opponent to be killed.
In early November, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon suggested on his program that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded, according to CNN. The video was removed from Facebook and YouTube, and Bannon was suspended from Twitter.
And at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, New Hampshire delegate and Trump veterans’ affairs advisor Al Baldasaro called for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to be killed. Speaking about the controversy concerning Clinton’s deleted emails on talk radio, Baldasaro said the former Secretary of State “should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.”
Trump has stepped up the dangerous and violent nature of his attacks on democracy as he continues his thus far fruitless efforts to invalidate the election.
His effort to overturn the election hit another dead end Monday, as Wisconsin became one of the last of the battleground states to certify Biden’s win yesterday. That did not stop Trump from going to the state’s Supreme Court again today, however, calling for it to throw out almost a quarter-million mail-in ballots cast by Wisconsin voters. This latest filing, like those before it, offers no evidence of fraud amongst those ballots.
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