️❣️❣️❣Trump shifts strategy to hold power as recount, lawsuit efforts
founder
https://news.trust.org/item/20201119224048-x8zsb/
by Reuters
Friday, 20 November 2020 01:36 GMT
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(Adds Georgia recount results, judges rejecting Trump legal
challenges)
By Michael Martina and Jarrett Renshaw
DETROIT/WILMINGTON, Del.,
Nov 19 (Reuters) - With legal efforts to overturn his loss in the U.S.
presidential election flailing, President Donald Trump's campaign is trying to
persuade Republican state legislators to intervene in battleground states won
by Democratic rival Joe Biden.
The new strategy, confirmed
by three people familiar with it, is being pursued even as Georgia completed a
painstaking recount on Thursday that affirmed Biden's victory there, and as
Trump's campaign said it was withdrawing a lawsuit challenging Biden's win in
Michigan.
Biden has captured 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.
In remarks on 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," said Biden, although he expressed no concern that the gambit
would succeed in preventing him from taking office on Jan. 20.
Trump's campaign has filed
at least nine lawsuits challenging the results since the Nov. 3 election, with
scant success so far. Judges in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania separately
dealt Trump more courtroom setbacks on Thursday, rejecting claims of
vote-counting improprieties.
A senior Trump campaign
official told Reuters the plan was to cast enough doubt on the results in
crucial states to persuade Republican legislators to step in and appoint their
own slates of electors.
The Trump campaign has
already asked a judge in Pennsylvania, where Biden won by 82,000 votes, to
declare Trump the winner and said its Republican-controlled legislature should
choose the state's 20 Electoral College voters.
While legal experts see Trump's last-gasp effort as unlikely to
succeed, they say the strategy represents an unprecedented assault on the
country's democratic institutions by a sitting president.
Republican legislative
leaders from Michigan are scheduled to visit the White House on Friday at
Trump's request, a source in Michigan said, adding the lawmakers planned to
hear what the president had to say.
Several prominent law firms have pulled out of the campaign's
legal challenges, leaving Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to spearhead
the efforts.
GIULIANI ALLEGES CONSPIRACY
At a news conference on Thursday, Giuliani said he planned to file
more lawsuits and that Democrats had engaged in a "national
conspiracy" to manipulate vote totals, although he admitted he did not
have any evidence. He did not answer a question about trying to sway state
lawmakers.
Other members of the legal team floated a theory involving
Venezuela and George Soros, a bogeyman of conservatives, although they said
they would probably not pursue it in court.
Giuliani said accounts of suspicious activity would ultimately
overturn the election, which Biden won nationwide by 5.9 million votes. Some of
those accounts have already been thrown out of court.
"We cannot allow these crooks - because that's what they are
- to steal this election. They elected Donald Trump. They didn't elect Joe
Biden," Giuliani said.
Giuliani's agitated performance, featuring rivulets of hair dye
running down his face, was widely mocked by Democrats. Others expressed alarm.
"That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes
of television in American history," tweeted Christopher Krebs, who headed
up the U.S. government's efforts to combat election disinformation until he was
fired by Trump earlier this week.
'NO EXCUSE'
Critics say Trump's refusal to concede has serious implications
for national security and the fight against the coronavirus, which has killed
more than 250,000 Americans.
Biden is not receiving the classified intelligence briefings due a
president-elect. He warned the delay could cause additional deaths as the
pandemic surges to record levels across the country.
"There is no excuse not to share the data and let us begin to
plan, because on Day One it's going to take us time, if we don't have access to
all this data," he said in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
"It's going to put us behind the eight ball by a matter of a month or
more, and that's lives."
The former vice president has focused on preparing his incoming
administration, naming senior staff members and getting briefed by his
advisers. He said on Thursday he had selected a Treasury secretary and could
announce his pick as soon as next week.
Part of the new Trump campaign effort involves trying 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
Board of Canvassers refused at first to certify the results, then reversed
themselves, then signed affidavits that they wanted to rescind their
certification.
One of the members told Reuters that Trump called her after she
agreed to certify the results.
Trump's campaign dropped a federal lawsuit on Thursday challenging
the election results in Michigan, citing the Wayne County officials'
affidavits. Officials said the affidavits were too late to stop certification.
In Georgia, a hand audit of ballots confirmed that Biden had won
the state, according to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The
state is expected to certify Biden's victory on Friday.
Trump and his allies, including Georgia's Republican U.S.
senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who both face runoff elections in
January, have accused fellow Republican Raffensperger without evidence of
overseeing a flawed election, an allegation Raffensperger has angrily disputed.
State and federal election officials agree with outside experts
that there is no evidence for Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud.
In the court of public opinion, however, the allegations appear to
be having their intended effect. A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on
Wednesday found about half of Republicans believed Trump "rightfully
won" the election.
Lawyer David Boies, who aided Democratic nominee Al Gore's legal
efforts after the 2000 election, said Trump's efforts to "stir up"
his political base would not change the ultimate outcome.
"From a legal standpoint, this election is over," Boies
told CNBC on Thursday.
(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in Wilmington, Delaware, and Michael
Martina in Detroit; Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan, Doina Chiacu, Jason
Lange, Susan Heavey and David Morgan in Washington; Writing by Sonya Hepinstall
and Joseph Ax; Editing by Scott Malone, Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Themes
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