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Donald Trump was condemned by opponents on Wednesday for firing the senior official who questioned his unfounded claims of voter fraud, as the president forged ahead with his increasingly desperate battle to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
The president’s election campaign team continued to push for recounts and investigations in battlefield states where Biden has already been declared the winner, including a new request in Wisconsin for a partial recount.
And there was an uproar over his decision Tuesday night, announced by tweet, to fire a federal official in charge of election security who dismissed his allegations of widespread voter fraud.
The firing of the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa), Christopher Krebs, was “pathetic and predictable on the part of a president who sees the truth as his enemy,” said House Democrat Adam Schiff.
Authorities have declared the Nov. 3 contest between Trump and Biden to be the safest US election in history.
On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court dealt a blow to Trump’s efforts in a state that Biden won by nearly 73,000 votes, saying officials did not improperly prevent the Trump campaign from observing mail ballot counts, as stated by the president.
In another lawsuit, led in federal court in the state by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has not filed a case in federal court since the early 1990s when he was a prosecutor, the campaign accused Democrats of a national conspiracy to steal the law. choice. No such evidence has emerged in the two weeks since the polls closed.
Attorneys for the Democratic secretary of state for Pennsylvania, the city of Philadelphia and several counties said the Trump campaign arguments lacked constitutional basis or were irrelevant by the state supreme court decision.
They asked US District Judge Matthew Brann to dismiss the case, calling the allegations “garden variety irregularities at best” that would not justify invalidating Pennsylvania’s results.
The next day, the Trump campaign requested a partial recount in Wisconsin, which Biden won by about 20,000 votes, while in Georgia, which the Democrat won by about 15,000, the manual recount continued until midnight.
CNN, for example, has declared Biden the winner in Georgia.
It was thought that neither state would change, and even if they did, their combined 26 electoral votes would not be enough to keep Trump in the White House, requiring a new setback in Pennsylvania, a grand prize with 20 votes, and equally unlikely that be it. accomplished.
Biden won the electoral college 306-232, the same margin by which Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, a victory he insisted on calling overwhelming. Candidates require 270 electoral college votes to win. Trump also continues to fight in Nevada.
By continuing to refuse to budge, Trump is delaying transition processes, including funding for Biden to build his administration, even as the United States falters amid a surge in the coronavirus.
In a statement announcing the request for a recount in Wisconsin, Trump’s campaign adviser Jim Troupis said: “The people of Wisconsin deserve to know if their electoral processes were run legally and transparently. Unfortunately, the integrity of the election results cannot be relied upon without a recount in these two counties and Wisconsin’s uniform application of absentee voting requirements. “
The Wisconsin election commission confirmed it had received $ 3 million from the Trump campaign for the partial recount.
A full count reportedly cost nearly $ 8 million. Trump continues to seek donations for the recount efforts, though much of that money has been widely reported to be used to pay off campaign debt and stoke a political action committee formed to strengthen Trump’s grip on the Republican party afterward. that he was forced to leave the White House in January.
Trump’s claims of widespread electoral fraud have been dismissed by officials from both parties and leading observers, as all moves to stop Biden’s march to victory have failed.
In Michigan, Republican officials backtracked amid cries of outrageous racism after threatening to block certification of the results in Wayne County, the largely African-American county that incorporates Detroit. Trump praised his blocking attempt on Twitter.
After an electoral race is called for a projected winner in a state, as in the case of the Associated Press, the results still have to be officially certified by state officials.
Biden won Michigan by about 346,000 votes.
Dave Wasserman, US House of Representatives editor of the Cook Nonpartisan Political Report, said: “It’s time to start calling unfounded conspiracies what they are: smear attacks against the more than 500,000 heroic poll workers and election administrators in every corner of the US who won a successful election amid record turnout and a global pandemic. “
The reverberations also continued over the president’s decision to fire Krebs, one of his own federal appointments.
In a statement last week, Cisa, Krebs’s agency, said: “The November 3 elections were the safest in US history. There is no evidence that any voting system has removed or lost votes, changed votes, or been compromised in any way. “
In its cheep In firing Krebs, Trump claimed that the statement was “very inaccurate.”
Schiff, chairman of the Democratic House intelligence committee, called the “pathetic and predictable dismissal of a president who sees the truth as his enemy.”
Angus King, Independent Senator from Maine, said: “When shooting [Krebs] By doing his job, President Trump is hurting all Americans. “
Krebs said: “It is an honor to serve. We did it well. Defend today, secure tomorrow. # Protect2020“
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