Joe diGenova apologizes to Chris Krebs for ‘grossly inappropriate’ execution comment

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Attorney Joe diGenova issued an apology to a former Homeland Security Department cybersecurity chief who he once suggested should be executed.

A statement was released on Friday, four months after the ex-official, Chris Krebs, sued him and the Trump campaign for defamation.

“On November 30, 2020, I appeared on the Howie Carr Show. During the show, I made regrettable statements regarding Christopher Krebs, which many interpreted as a call for violence against him,” diGenova said. “A few days later on Newsmax, I apologized for my grossly inappropriate statements, and today I reiterate my public apology to Mr. Krebs and his family for any harm my words caused. Given today’s political climate, I should have more carefully expressed my criticism of Mr. Krebs, who was just doing his job.”

DiGenova, who is being represented by Cooper & Kirk PLLC, stirred controversy in November when he reacted to Krebs’s interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes that aired the night before. “Anybody who thinks that this election went well, like that idiot Krebs,” diGenova began, “that guy is a class-A moron. He should be drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot.”

Krebs, who was fired from his post as chief of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency earlier that month, stressed on CBS News’s 60 Minutes that U.S. citizens should be confident in the results of the 2020 election in the face of election fraud claims and lawsuits by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

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“There is no foreign power that is flipping votes. There’s no domestic actor flipping votes. I did it right. We did it right. This was a secure election,” Krebs said.

DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney, was part of the Trump legal team, which was led by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, along with diGenova’s wife, Victoria Toensing.

Krebs sued the Trump campaign and diGenova on Dec. 8 in Montgomery County, Maryland, Circuit Court, alleging defamation and the infliction of emotional distress, even after diGenova claimed he was being sarcastic.

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The lawsuit seeks monetary damages and the removal of the video from Newsmax archives. Krebs also claimed he had received death threats and that he and his family were forced to leave their home for their own safety.

DiGenova told the Washington Examiner in December that he meant no harm to Krebs. “For anyone listening to the Howie Carr Show, it was obvious that my remarks were sarcastic and made in jest. I, of course, wish Mr. Krebs no harm. This was hyperbole during political discourse,” he said.

Krebs, who is a former top official at Microsoft, joined the Trump administration as senior counselor to the secretary of the DHS in March 2017, and he was later nominated and confirmed to be undersecretary for national protection and programs at the DHS. After being fired, he and former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos founded a cybersecurity consultancy firm, the Krebs Stamos Group.

A lawyer for Krebs declined comment when reached by the Washington Examiner for comment on DiGenova’s apology.

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