With legal efforts to reverse his defeat in the US presidential election, President Donald Trump’s campaign is trying to persuade Republican state lawmakers to intervene in the battle states won by Democratic rival Joe Biden.
The new strategy, confirmed by three people familiar with it, is being applied even as Georgia approaches the completion of a painstaking recount that is expected to affirm Biden’s victory there, and as the Trump campaign said it was withdrawing a lawsuit that challenges. Biden’s win at Michigan.
Biden has obtained 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the winner of the election, well above the 270 needed for victory.
Speaking Thursday after a call with 10 state governors, the president-elect called Trump’s attempt to reverse the results “totally irresponsible.”
“It sends a horrible message about who we are as a country,” Biden said, although he did not express any concern that the tactic would prevent him from taking office on January 20.
The Trump campaign has filed at least nine lawsuits challenging the results since the Nov.3 election, with little success so far. On Thursday, an Arizona judge dealt Trump another setback in the courtroom when he rejected an offer to prevent the state’s largest county from certifying its vote count.
A senior Trump campaign official told Reuters the plan was to cast enough doubt on the results in crucial states to persuade Republican lawmakers to step in and appoint their own voters lists.
The Trump campaign has already asked a judge in Pennsylvania, where Biden won by 82,000 votes, to declare Trump the winner and said his Republican-controlled legislature should choose all 20 voters from the state’s Electoral College.
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.
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.
Several prominent law firms have withdrawn from the campaign’s legal challenges, leaving Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, at the forefront of the efforts.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. He did not answer a question about trying to influence state legislators.
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’s what they are, to steal this election. They elected Donald Trump. They did not elect 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 1h 45 minute television in US history,” tweeted Christopher Krebs, who led the US government’s efforts to combat electoral disinformation until Trump fired him in early September this week.
‘WITHOUT EXCUSES’
Critics say Trump’s refusal to compromise has serious implications for national security and the fight against coronavirus
, which has killed more than 250,000 Americans.
Biden is not receiving classified intelligence reports due to an elected president. 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 for 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.
Part of Trump’s new campaign effort involves attempting to delay certification, the normally routine process by which election results are finalized, the 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. However, authorities say it is too late.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Thursday that the state will conduct a planned voluntary audit after the results are certified, which she called routine.
The battlefield state of Georgia, where Biden became the Democratic presidential candidate to win in nearly three decades, was about to complete a manual recount Thursday, which election officials said would not alter the overall result.
State and federal election officials agree with outside experts that there is no evidence of Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.
In the court of public opinion, however, the accusations seem to have the desired effect. A Reuters / Ipsos opinion poll released Wednesday found that roughly half of Republicans believed that Trump “legitimately won” the election.
Attorney David Boies, who aided Democratic candidate Al Gore’s legal efforts after the 2000 election, said Trump’s efforts to “shake up” his political base would not change the bottom line.
“From a legal standpoint, this election is over,” Boies told CNBC on Thursday.
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