President-elect Joe Biden sought to keep a focus on the economy Wednesday by holding a virtual roundtable with workers and small-business owners affected by the downturn.
In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, chided Trump for questioning the integrity of the state’s election, comments he said are responsible for a volley of threats against election workers. Christopher Krebs, the government’s ousted top election security official, also denounced such threats, calling them “un-American” and “undemocratic” in a Washington Post Live event Wednesday.
Key GOP senators dismiss possibility that Senate would reject electoral votes
Key Republican senators sent a stark message Wednesday to supporters of Trump who are counting on Congress to step in and reject President-elect Joe Biden’s victory: That isn’t going to happen.
Under federal law, Congress will meet in a Jan. 6 joint session to accept the votes of the electoral college, which formally votes Dec. 14. Any lawmaker can join with a companion from the other chamber to raise an objection to any state’s votes, prompting a debate and votes in each chamber on whether to accept the challenge.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) told Politico that he intended to make such a challenge, and several other members, including Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), have enthusiastically joined efforts to question Biden’s victory.
But no senator has publicly entertained joining the effort, and on Wednesday, several key Republican senators dismissed the possibility that the Senate would reject electoral votes or even join a House member’s challenge.
President’s attorneys urge Michigan legislators to respond to unproven allegations of election corruption
Trump campaign lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani and Jenna Ellis gave opening statements before a Michigan House panel Wednesday night citing unproven allegations that the state’s election process had been corrupted.
In his statement, Giuliani referred to alleged “massive fraud” in Detroit ballot counting and he repeated baseless claims about an election hardware company called Dominion Voting Systems.
Ellis said in her opening statement that the legislature has a constitutional mandate “not to allow a corrupt” election. She said that the founders provided “a tool — state legislators — to combat corruption” in elections.
That interpretation of the constitutional responsibility of state legislatures is disputed by many election experts who worry that it could lead them to attempt to overturn certified election results.
Norm Eisen, a former Obama appointee who serves as counsel to the Voter Protection Project, called the Trump attorneys’ interpretation “constitutional disinformation that has no basis in law.”
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) suggested two Democrats on Wednesday who he believes would make a good agriculture secretary — “if” Biden becomes president.
Biden won the 2020 race for the White House with 306 electoral votes, and Attorney General William P. Barr said Tuesday that he has “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
“I realize this might hurt their chances but if Biden becomes pres he should select an Iowan or Heidi Heitkamp or Collin Peterson to be Ag Secretary,” Grassley tweeted Wednesday afternoon. “They’d be able to get things done for IA/Midwest farmers even w Democratic House & Republican Senate.”
Heitkamp, a Democrat, served as North Dakota senator from 2013 to 2019, losing her reelection bid to Republican Kevin Cramer. Peterson, one of the most conservative Democrats in the House, is chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. He lost his 2020 reelection bid to Republican Michelle Fischbach.
Among the potential candidates for the agriculture spot are Heitkamp and Democratic Reps. Cheri Bustos (Ill.), Marcia L. Fudge (Ohio) and Chellie Pingree (Maine).
A handful of Republican senators have congratulated Biden, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has urged Trump to concede. But most Senate Republicans have refused to refer to Biden as the president-elect. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) acknowledged “the incoming administration” at a news conference Tuesday but has stopped short of congratulating Biden, saying “the future will take care of itself.”
Grassley’s tweet about Biden stood in contrast to a message he sent two days after the 2016 election, when he acknowledged Trump’s win over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump, like Biden, won 306 electoral votes.
“Just observed first meeting of Pres/Elect T &PresObama,” Grassley tweeted then. “Looks like things went well Both said so TRANSITION IS ON/ Read Ist Tim 2:1-2&pray.”
Trump releases 46-minute video repeating baseless accusations of voter fraud
Standing behind a lectern with the presidential seal and flanked by the American flag, Trump taped a 46-minute address from inside the White House in which he repeated debunked and misleading claims that his election loss was the result of widespread voting fraud and corruption.
The president tweeted a two-minute teaser, calling the speech possibly the most important of his presidency, and then quickly posted the speech in its entirety.
In his most extensive comments since the election, Trump repeated and expanded upon many of his false claims that the election was rigged. He suggested overturning the results, invoked the special counsel Russia investigation as evidence that he has been a target of a coordinated effort to end his presidency and called on the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the results.
Repeating his baseless allegation that millions of votes in swing states were cast illegally, Trump said that the “results of the individual swing states must be overturned and overturned immediately” and that, “hopefully, the courts, in particular the Supreme Court of the United States, will see it, and, respectfully, hopefully, they will do what’s right for our country.”
He claimed in the speech that the surge in mail-in voting, which was expanded because of the coronavirus pandemic, was “a scam” to tamper with the results. The U.S. Justice Department has said — as have several states and courts — that it has found no evidence of widespread fraud or security breaches in the election that would have changed the results.
Biden calls on Congress to ‘come together and pass a robust package of relief’ amid pandemic
During a virtual roundtable with Americans who shared their stories of how the coronavirus pandemic has affected them financially, Biden called on Congress to immediately pass a relief package — even as he acknowledged that any bill passed during the lame-duck session would only be a “down payment” on a larger effort to come once he takes office.
“The point is, the full Congress should come together and pass a robust package of relief to address your urgent needs now,” Biden told the participants in Wednesday’s roundtable.
After listening to several participants talking of the economic hardship they have faced during the pandemic, the president-elect prefaced his remarks by noting that there’s very little he can do at the moment.
“To state the obvious, my ability to get you help immediately does not exist. I’m not even in office for another 50 days. And then I have to get legislation passed through the United States Congress to get things done,” he said.
Biden then outlined his priorities for helping Americans get back on their feet, including extending unemployment insurance; ensuring businesses have the resources they need to open safely; providing states and cities with funding so workers can go back to work; and preventing Americans from getting evicted during the pandemic.
Ultimately, Biden said, he thinks Congress is “trying like the devil” to come to an agreement. But he added that “what happened was the president said he wouldn’t support it, and, apparently, Republicans in the Congress said — the House, the Senate — said they wouldn’t support it.”
“So it’s now back to square one again,” he said.
At one point in his remarks, Biden held up the face mask that he usually wears while in public, directly challenging those who have opposed face coverings on the grounds that they violate their freedom.
“When I have this mask on, it’s less about me being safe. It’s about me making sure that you’re safe,” he said. “It’s a patriotic thing to do. It really is. You know, I hear all this about, ‘Well, it’s a great sacrifice of my freedom.’ Well, tell that to all the people who went to World War I and gave their lives, and World War II, and the Korean War, and talk to me — I mean, come on.”
Biden added: “You’re helping other people. It’s not you. It’s other people. Other people. And, so, I think we have to change the mind-set here a little bit. It’s got to be about giving.”
Trump allies Sidney Powell and Lin Wood urge Georgians to boycott Senate runoffs
Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for the Trump campaign, led a rally in a northern Atlanta suburb in which she exhorted hundreds of the president’s supporters not to participate in the Senate runoffs in part because she said the state’s voting machines are not trustworthy.
“I would encourage all Georgians to make it known that you will not vote at all unless your vote is secure,” Powell said. “There should not be a runoff. Certainly not on Dominion machines.”
Powell claimed falsely that the machines, manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, were rigged to weight Biden’s votes more heavily than Trump’s, that a hand recount was a sham, and that state and local election officials have been destroying ballots and other evidence of fraud. She has presented no proof of her claims.
Lin Wood, another Trump ally who helped lead Wednesday’s event, made similar claims, stating, “We’re not going to vote on your damn machines made in China. We’re going to vote on machines made in the USA!”
Wood took aim at just about every state Republican leader in Georgia, including Sen. Kelly Loeffler, Sen. David Perdue, Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the state party chair, David Shafer, even though some of them have stood by Trump and echoed his false claims of fraud.
“If they don’t fight for Donald Trump, including Loeffler and Perdue, send them all home!” Wood exclaimed to the crowd. “You are criminals!”
Powell insisted that the results in Georgia and other states had been altered, affecting races up and down the ballot, though the hand audit of all ballots completed last month showed that to be impossible. She suggested an election conducted entirely with paper ballots “that are signed and have a thumb print on them,” which would violate Georgia’s constitutional requirement of a secret ballot.
Iowa Democrat wants U.S. House to review results of race she lost by six votes
A Democratic House candidate in Iowa is challenging the results of a race she lost by six votes, appealing directly to the U.S. House for its review.
Rita Hart, a former Iowa state senator, says a recount that narrowed Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks’s lead from 47 votes to just six left many legally cast ballots uncounted, including from active-duty military members overseas.
“We all watched #IA02 close from 47 votes to 6, but there are still ballots that haven’t been counted,” Hart tweeted. “The only way to ensure all Iowans’ votes are counted is a full examination of this election by the U.S. House that will consider every ballot cast.”
The district is currently represented by Democrat Rep. David Loebsack, who chose not to run for reelection.
Iowa certified Miller-Meeks the winner Monday, but under the Federal Contested Elections Act, Hart intends to file a petition to the House Administration Committee asking that it review all the votes cast, including those left out in the state’s recount.
The request from Hart, whose razor-thin loss marks the closest congressional election since 1984, will at minimum allow her to present her case to the House committee. The panel can then decide whether to conduct its own investigation and, after its conclusion, make a recommendation to the full House about who should fill the seat.
Democrats hold a slim majority in the House, which is all it would take to override the state’s certification of Miller-Meeks as the winner and award Hart the seat.
White House declines to say whether Trump will attend Biden’s inauguration
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Wednesday declined to say whether President Trump will attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration in January, telling reporters that the announcement is up to Trump to make.
Outgoing presidents traditionally attend the inauguration of their successor. Biden’s inauguration is scheduled to take place Jan. 20 on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol.
“Is the president seriously considering skipping the inauguration?” a reporter asked McEnany during a news briefing Wednesday.
“I’ll leave that to the president to make his announcement,” McEnany replied. “He tweeted something to the effect of he knows what his decision is, and he’ll make his decision at the right time.”
Asked what rationale Trump could possibly have for skipping the event, McEnany declined to say.
“I’m not going to speculate on the president’s decision. I’ll leave that to him to announce it,” she said.
Trump has repeatedly made false claims that Biden won the election as a result of widespread election fraud. Pushing back against Trump’s baseless assertions, Attorney General William P. Barr said Tuesday that he has “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
On Thanksgiving, when a reporter asked Trump whether he plans to attend the inauguration, the president said he had made a decision but was not ready to announce it.
“I don’t want to say that yet,” Trump said. “I mean, I know the answer. I’ll be honest, I know the answer, but I just don’t want to say it yet.”
He then went on to make more false claims of election fraud.
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