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DETROIT / WILMINGTON, Del., Nov. 19 (Reuters) – After a thorough recount, Georgia officials confirmed Thursday that President-elect Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in battlefield status on Nov. 3, reducing even more so, the president’s dubious effort to reverse the election results.
By Michael Martina and Jarrett Renshaw
The result of the six-day manual recount of the state’s 5 million votes was widely expected, despite unsubstantiated allegations by Trump and his allies that Georgia’s vote counts were suspect due to widespread fraud.
Amid a series of court losses, Trump’s re-election campaign has shifted to a new strategy that relies on persuading Republican state lawmakers in crucial states to ignore election results and intervene on Trump’s behalf. , according to three people familiar with the plan.
The campaign has filed multiple lawsuits to try to challenge the results in the battlefield states that Biden won, as election officials across the country have claimed there is no evidence of major wrongdoing. Judges in three states delivered further legal setbacks to the campaign on Thursday, rejecting allegations of improper vote counting.
Biden, a Democrat, has garnered 306 electoral votes to Republican Trump’s 232 in the Electoral College state-by-state determining the winner of the election, well above the 270 needed for victory.
The Georgia audit, launched after unofficial results showed Biden leading Trump by about 14,000 votes cast, ended with Biden winning by 12,284, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. The state is expected to certify Biden’s victory on Friday.
Trump and his allies, including Republican US Senators from Georgia David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are facing a runoff election in January, have accused fellow Republican Raffensperger without evidence of having overseen a flawed election, a charge that Raffensperger has disputed angrily.
Speaking Thursday after a call with 10 state governors, Biden called Trump’s attempt to reverse the results “totally irresponsible.”
“It sends a horrible message about who we are as a country,” the president-elect said, although he did not express any concern that the tactic would prevent him from taking office on January 20.
While legal experts consider Trump’s latest effort unlikely to succeed, they say the strategy represents an unprecedented assault on the country’s democratic institutions by a sitting president.
The Trump campaign has already asked a judge in Pennsylvania, where Biden won by 82,000 votes, to declare Trump the winner, allowing the Republican-controlled legislature to choose all 20 voters from the state’s Electoral College.
Several prominent law firms have withdrawn from the campaign’s legal challenges, leaving Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, at the forefront of the efforts.
GIULIANI ALLEGES CONSPIRACY
At a news conference Thursday, Giuliani said he planned to file more lawsuits and that Democrats had engaged in a “national conspiracy” to manipulate vote totals, though he admitted he had no evidence.
Other members of the legal team raised a theory involving Venezuela and George Soros, a ghost of the conservatives, although they said they probably would not take it to court.
Giuliani said the reports of suspicious activity would eventually overturn the election, which Biden won nationwide by 5.9 million votes. Some of those accounts have already been removed from court.
“We cannot allow these criminals, because that is what they are, to steal these elections. They elected Donald Trump. They didn’t pick Joe Biden, ”Giuliani said.
Giuliani’s hectic performance, with rivulets of hair dye running down his face, was widely mocked by Democrats. Others expressed alarm.
“That press conference was the most dangerous 1 hour and 45 minute television in US history,” tweeted Christopher Krebs, who led the US government’s efforts to combat electoral disinformation until he was fired by Trump to earlier this week.
‘WITHOUT EXCUSES’
Critics say Trump’s refusal to compromise has serious implications for national security and the fight against the coronavirus, which has killed more than 250,000 Americans.
Biden is not receiving classified intelligence due to a president-elect, and his transition team has not received the funding, office space, and briefings from current government officials that are normally given to an incoming administration.
He warned that the delay could cause more deaths as the pandemic reaches record levels across the country.
“There is no excuse not to share the data and let’s start planning, because the first day will take us time, if we don’t have access to all this data,” he said in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. . “He’s going to put us behind the eight ball in a matter of a month or more, and that’s lives.”
The former vice president has focused on preparing his incoming administration, appointing senior members of staff and receiving briefings from his advisers. He said Thursday that he had selected a Secretary of the Treasury and that he could announce his election next week.
Democratic leaders in Congress sent a letter Thursday to the administrator in charge of releasing the transition funds, Emily Murphy, demanding that she explain why she has not yet recognized Biden as president-elect.
Part of Trump’s new campaign effort involves trying to delay certification, the normally routine process by which election results are finalized, a senior campaign official said.
In Detroit on Tuesday, Republican members of the Wayne County Canvassing Board initially refused to certify the results, then reversed themselves and then signed affidavits wanting to rescind their certification.
One of the members told Reuters that Trump called her after she agreed to certify the results.
The Trump campaign withdrew a federal lawsuit on Thursday that challenged the election results in Michigan, citing the affidavits of Wayne County officials. Officials said the affidavits came too late to stop the certification.
Michigan Republican legislative leaders are scheduled to visit the White House on Friday at Trump’s request, a source in Michigan said, adding that lawmakers planned to hear what the president had to say.
(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in Wilmington, Delaware, and Michael Martina in Detroit; Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan, Doina Chiacu, Simon Lewis, Jason Lange, Susan Heavey, and David Morgan in Washington; Written by Sonya Hepinstall and Joseph Ax; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)
