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Politics and Government News
Brian Naylor, NPR

Former cybersecurity chief sues Trump campaign and others, charging defamation

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Former cybersecurity chief Christopher Krebs says he was defamed by the Trump campaign and attorney Joseph diGenova.
Former cybersecurity chief Christopher Krebs says he was defamed by the Trump campaign and attorney Joseph diGenova.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag

Christopher Krebs, who was fired by President Donald Trump last month after asserting the recent presidential election was "the most secure in American history," filed suit Tuesday against the Trump campaign, attorney Joseph diGenova and the cable channel Newsmax.

Krebs charges he was defamed by diGenova, who said on Newsmax that Krebs "should be drawn and quartered" or "shot at dawn" following Krebs' statement. Krebs says such punishments are the "fate of a convicted traitor" and are the basis for his defamation accusation.

The lawsuit, filed in Montgomery County, Md., circuit court, seeks an injunction ordering Newsmax to remove the diGenova interview from its website, as well as monetary damages.

Krebs charges he has been the victim of death threats following DiGenova's remarks, which diGenova has said were "hyperbole."

Krebs was the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, which was in charge of election security. It, along with a council of private industry groups and state election officials, released a statement last month that said not only was the election the most secure in U.S. history, but also that "there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."

That assessment runs counter to Trump's made-up claims that the election was rigged and that voting equipment provided by Dominion Voting Systems had "deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide" and switched hundreds of thousands of other Trump votes to Joe Biden.

The council made its statement on Nov. 12, and Trump announced via Twitter that Krebs "had been terminated" five days later.

Speaking on NPR's Morning Edition earlier this month, Krebs said he had no regrets about making that statement. "It was the right thing to do in the name of democracy," he told Steve Inskeep.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.