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WASHINGTON / WILMINGTON, Del., Nov. 12 (Reuters) – More Republican lawmakers said Thursday that the Trump administration should allow Joe Biden to receive intelligence reports, in a tacit recognition that the Democrat will soon occupy the White House despite the president’s refusal to yield.
By Susan Cornwell and Simon Lewis
Most Republican officials and lawmakers have publicly supported President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election results through a series of lawsuits filed in individual states, following the president’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud.
Manual count audits in more than six counties in the battlefield state of Arizona, where Biden continues to lead amid ongoing vote counting, found only minor discrepancies, according to the secretary of state’s office. The audits involve the manual counting of a random sample of ballots.
Biden has been moving forward with the work of preparing to govern and spoke with Pope Francis as his fellow Democrats in Congress criticized the “antics” of the Republican elections and urged action on the coronavirus pandemic.
With some states still counting the ballots, Biden has won enough states on the battlefield to surpass the 270 electoral votes needed in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the next president. Biden is also winning the popular vote by more than 5.2 million votes, or 3.4 percentage points.
A growing number of Republican senators, including John Cornyn, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham, urged the Trump administration to allow Biden access to daily presidential intelligence briefings.
The president-elect traditionally receives such reports from the intelligence community to learn of the threats the United States faces before taking office.
“I don’t see it as a high-risk proposition. I think it is part of the transition. And if he does indeed win in the end, I think they should be able to start immediately, ”Cornyn told reporters. However, he declined to say that Biden had won.
The main Republican in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, opposed the idea.
“He is not president at the moment. I don’t know if he will be president on January 20, ”McCarthy said, refusing to acknowledge Trump’s defeat.
A group of 150 former US officials, including some from the Trump administration, said intelligence briefings were essential to ensure the continuity of the government.
The top two congressional Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, condemned the Trump administration’s refusal to engage with the Biden transition team on Thursday.
Democratic leaders also urged Republicans to join them in passing laws to address the pandemic and prop up the ailing economy.
“Republicans must stop their antics about an election that President Trump has already lost and turn their attention to the immediate problem at hand: bringing relief to a country experiencing the economic and health crisis of COVID,” said Schumer.
Biden, who will become the second Catholic president of the United States, after John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, spoke with the pope on Thursday and thanked him for his “blessings and congratulations,” his transition team said. .
Biden told the pontiff that he wanted to work together on issues such as caring for the poor, addressing climate change and welcoming immigrants and refugees.
PANDEMIC IN FOCUS
Biden has been focused on planning his administration, and the focus is expected to turn to his selections for key Cabinet positions before taking office. He was scheduled to meet privately with transition advisers on Friday, his team said, as he did Thursday.
On Wednesday, he appointed longtime adviser Ron Klain as White House chief of staff, his first major appointment. Klain, who led the US government’s Ebola response in 2014, is expected to take a leadership role in Biden’s approach to the escalating pandemic that has killed more than 242,000 Americans, with a record high. than 142,000 new COVID-19 cases recorded on Wednesday.
Trump, who has ignored public health recommendations about wearing masks and social distancing, was hospitalized with COVID-19 last month. Many Trump associates have been infected, with close adviser Corey Lewandowski becoming the last on Thursday.
The Trump campaign has filed multiple lawsuits challenging vote counting in individual states. Legal experts have said the litigation has little chance of altering the outcome, and state election officials have said they saw no evidence of serious wrongdoing or fraud.
In a sign of weakening support for Trump’s efforts to claim widespread voter fraud, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican who backed Trump, told CNN on Thursday that “we must consider the former vice president as the president-elect. ”.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal, owned by top Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, ran an editorial noting there was no evidence of fraud and saying that Trump “seeks to delay the inevitable.”
Karl Rove, White House deputy chief of staff for former Republican President George W. Bush, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “once his days in court are over, the president should do his part to unite the country by leading a transition. peaceful and let go of complaints. “
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell, Doina Chiacu, and Simon Lewis; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Patricia Zengerle, Jeff Mason, Andrea Shalal, Lisa Lambert, and James Oliphant; written by Will Dunham and Joseph Ax; edited by Ross Colvin and Peter Cooney)
