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With Trump refusing to acknowledge the election result, Biden and his top advisers have been denied information on sensitive domestic and foreign policy issues, most urgently being the coronavirus pandemic hitting the country.
US President-Elect Joe Biden speaks while addressing the media after a virtual meeting with the executive committee of the National Association of Governors at the Queen Theater on November 19, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware . Image: AFP
WASHINGTON – US President-elect Joe Biden will appoint his first cabinet elections Tuesday, his chief of staff said, even as Donald Trump clung to baseless fraud allegations despite growing dissent within his own match.
Biden has gone ahead with preparations to assume the presidency on January 20, regardless of Trump’s attempt to undo the results of the November 3 vote.
“It will see the first cabinet election of the president-elect on Tuesday this week,” Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain told ABC. This week on Sunday.
He declined to say which positions the president-elect would announce, although Biden said last week that he had already decided on his choice for the key post of Secretary of the Treasury.
A growing number of Republicans have acknowledged Biden’s victory or at least have urged the General Services Administration, the generally low-profile agency that runs the federal bureaucracy, to release federal funds for Biden’s transition.
With Trump refusing to acknowledge the election result, Biden and his top advisers have been denied information on sensitive domestic and foreign policy issues, making the country more urgent from the coronavirus pandemic.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who in 2016 advised Trump’s transition, told ABC that the president’s legal team was a “national embarrassment” and that it was time for the GSA to release transition funds.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, another prominent Republican, said on CNN that Trump was making the country look like a “banana republic.” Later, he tweeted that the president should “stop golfing and concede.”
The president has played golf every weekend since the election, although he participated practically this weekend in the conference of the main G20 economies. Trump skipped a session Saturday on the pandemic.
Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, said that if Trump’s attorneys cannot prove the fraud allegations, the president must “respect the sanctity of our electoral process.”
Even Rep. Devin Nunes, a fervent Trump supporter, indirectly admitted on Fox News that Biden was “the first guy to run a successful campaign from a basement.”
‘NO MERIT’
Trump tweeted again Sunday about “massive amounts of fraudulent ballots,” a claim dismissed by a long line of judges in several states.
The appearances of Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, have drawn ridicule, as have the claims of another member of his legal team, Sidney Powell.
Powell has alleged unfounded conspiracy theories involving possible election hacking, earning him plenty of mockery but also praise from some of Trump’s most ardent supporters.
On Sunday, Giuliani distanced the team from her and said in a statement that they had left her.
“Sidney Powell practices law on his own,” he said.
Trump’s latest legal setback came on Saturday, when a Pennsylvania judge dismissed the president’s fraud allegations in a severe sentence.
Pennsylvania was a must-win state this year and solidly joined Biden’s column after backing Trump in 2016.
Judge Matthew Brann wrote that Trump’s team had made “tense, meritless legal arguments and speculative allegations” in their complaints about vote-by-mail ballots in Pennsylvania.
His ruling paved the way for Pennsylvania to certify Biden’s victory there, which is scheduled for Monday.
Biden won the Electoral College votes state by state that ultimately decide who takes the White House for 306-232.
The Electoral College must formally vote on December 14 and certifications must be made in advance.
‘INCREDIBLY DAMAGE’
Certification of the results of their popular votes by states is often routine after a US presidential election.
But Trump’s refusal to concede has raised concerns that it could cause long-term damage to Americans’ confidence in the voting system that underlies American democracy.
The Pennsylvania ruling came hours after Republicans also requested a delay in certification in Michigan, another battlefield, in a letter repeating allegations of wrongdoing in the state, which Biden won by 155,000 votes.
They requested a two week delay to allow a full audit of the results in Wayne County. Wayne is the largest county in the state and home to the black-majority Detroit, which Biden overwhelmingly won.
Michigan’s board of voters, which includes two Democrats and two Republicans, will meet Monday to certify the results.
There were reports that a Republican member of the board was considering voting against the certification.
Biden has so far tempered his criticism of Trump’s actions, though he has spoken of “incredibly damaging messages being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy works,” adding: “It’s difficult to understand how this man thinks.”
Other Democrats have been relentless in their criticism.
Samantha Power, who was a UN ambassador under Barack Obama, told CNN that Trump’s failure to allow a smooth transition was “reckless in the extreme,” depriving Biden of updated reports on such sensitive issues as troop levels. in Afghanistan and any potential. threats to US targets abroad.
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