1,Donald Trump releases video statement

repeating baseless vote fraud claims

President claims electoral system ‘under coordinated assault’

Justice department found no evidence of significant fraud

Lauren Aratani and agencies

Thu 3 Dec 2020 01.00 GMT

Facebook and Twitter have placed warnings on a 46-minute video statement

released by Donald Trump on Wednesday, in which the president repeats
baseless claims of voter fraud in November’s election, which he lost to Joe Biden.

President-elect Biden, a veteran Democrat, won the presidential election with

306 electoral college votes, compared with Trump’s 232. However, Trump has
refused to concede, and has instead launched – and lost – flimsy legal battles in
several states, which experts said appeared aimed at dragging out vote counting
and creating a cloud of uncertainty over the electoral process.

“This may be the most important speech I’ve ever made,” Trump says in the
video, before making lengthy, rambling and baseless claims that America’s
electoral system is “under coordinated assault and siege”.

Trump, who spoke from the Diplomatic Room, kept up his futile pushback
against the election even as state after state certifies its results and as Biden
presses ahead with shaping his cabinet in advance of his inauguration on 20
January.

Biden received a record 81m votes compared to 74m for Trump. The Democrat
also won 306 electoral votes compared to 232 for Trump. The electoral college
split matches Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton four years ago, which he
described then as a “landslide”.

Trump dug further into his contention of a “rigged election” even though
members of his own administration, including the attorney general, William
Barr, say that no proof of widespread voter fraud has been uncovered. Courts in
multiple battleground states have thrown out a barrage of lawsuits filed on behalf
of the president.
“This is not just about honoring the votes of 74 million Americans who voted for
me,” Trump said. “It’s about ensuring that Americans can have faith in this
election. And in all future elections.”

The Trump video comes a day after Barr said the US Department of Justice had
not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the
outcome of the presidential election.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Barr said US attorneys and FBI agents
had been working to follow up complaints and information but had uncovered no
evidence that would change the outcome of the election.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different
outcome in the election,” Barr said.

Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in a statement:
“With the greatest respect to the attorney general, his opinion appears to be
without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and
evidence of systemic fraud.”

As the 8 December deadline for states to certify their results approaches, Trump
is fast running out of options to contest the outcome of the election.

Many of Trump’s claims, including that the US election was subject to

widespread “voter fraud”, have been debunked repeatedly in recent weeks.

 'It has to stop': Georgia Republican says Trump's election rhetoric will lead to violence – video

In fact, Christopher Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland

Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, voiced confidence in
the integrity of the election ahead of the November vote. And afterward, he
knocked down allegations that the count was tainted by fraud. Krebs was fired by
Trump weeks ago.

The video was released a day after one of Georgia’s top election officials made an
impassioned plea to Trump to tone down his rhetoric disputing the election
results, saying the president was “inspiring people to commit potential acts of
violence”.

Gabriel Sterling, a Republican who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new
voting system, also issued the stark warning that if Trump and his supporters did
not rein in election disinformation “someone is going to get hurt”.

Sterling, the voting systems manager for the Georgia secretary of state’s office,
said last week that he had police protection around his home because of threats
he received after election results were announced. Trump lost Georgia to Biden
by about 13,000 votes.

Trump responded to Sterling’s plea by tweeting baseless claims about the Georgia

election and criticising the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp. Twitter
flagged his tweet as “disputed”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/02/donald-trump-video-statement-baseless-vote-
fraud-claims

2, Donald Trump says he will leave White

House if electoral college votes for Joe
Biden
President’s comments are the closest he has come to admitting
defeat in election and set stage for college vote on 14 December

Martin Farrer and agencies

Thu 26 Nov 2020 23.16 GMT

Donald Trump has said that he will leave the White House in January if the
electoral college votes for Democratic president-elect Joe Biden, in the closest the
outgoing president has come to conceding defeat.

Biden won the presidential election with 306 electoral college votes – many more
than the 270 required – to Trump’s 232. Biden also leads Trump by more than 6
million in the popular vote tally.

Trump has so far defied tradition by refusing to concede defeat, instead making a
series of baseless claims about alleged ballot fraud and launching legal attempts
to challenge the outcomes in several states such Pennsylvania and Michigan.
But desperate efforts by Trump and his aides to overturn results in key states,
either by lawsuits or by pressuring state legislators, have failed.

Speaking to reporters on the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump said if Biden – who is

due to be sworn in on 20 January – was certified the election winner by the
electoral college, he would depart the White House.

Trump’s comments, made to reporters at the White House after speaking to

troops during the traditional Thanksgiving Day address to US service members,
appear to take him one step nearer to admitting defeat.

Asked if he would leave the White House if the college vote went against him,
Trump said: “Certainly I will. And you know that,” adding that: “If they do,
they’ve made a mistake.”

 Donald Trump arrives for the event on Thursday night. Photograph: Erin Scott/Reuters

However, Trump said it would be “a very hard thing to concede” and declined to
say whether he would attend Biden’s inauguration, which is due to take place on
20 January.

It was the first time he had taken questions from reporters since election day, and
at times he turned combative, calling one reporter a “lightweight” and telling him
“don’t talk to me like that”.

Trump’s administration has already given the green light for a formal transition
to get underway. But Trump took issue with Biden moving forward.

“I think it’s not right that he’s trying to pick a Cabinet,” Trump said, even though
officials from both teams are already working together to get Biden’s team up to
speed.
At one point he urged reporters not to allow Biden the credit for pending
coronavirus vaccines.

“Don’t let him take credit for the vaccines because the vaccines were me and I
pushed people harder than they’ve ever been pushed before,” he said.

As for whether or not he plans to formally declare his candidacy to run again in
2024 – as he has discussed with aides – Trump he didn’t “want to talk about
2024 yet.”

In late-night tweets, Trump complained that the media had not covered his news
conference in the way he had wanted, saying the main point he had tried to make
was that he won the election. Twitter flagged his comments.

The electoral college is due to meet on 14 December when each state’s nominated
electors will cast their votes for the winner of the state’s presidential ballot. The
votes are officially counted by Congress on 6 January.

When asked about Trump’s comments, Biden campaign spokesperson, Michael

Gwin said: “President-elect Biden won 306 electoral votes. States continue to
certify those results, the Electoral College will soon meet to ratify that outcome,”
adding: “Biden will be sworn in as President on January 20, 2021.”

Showing that he intends to stay in the political fray until the end of his term,
Trump said on Thursday he would travel on 5 December to Georgia, a once
solidly Republican state he lost narrowly to Biden, to campaign for two
Republican Senate candidates.

The two runoff elections in Georgia on 5 January will determine whether the
Republicans keep their majority in the Senate.

Biden and Trump both stayed close to home to celebrate Thanksgiving as the
coronavirus pandemic raged across the country.

Biden spent the holiday with his family in Delaware, giving a presidential-style
address in a message posted on Twitter. He said Americans were making a
“shared sacrifice for the whole country” and a “statement of common purpose” by
staying at home with their immediate families.

Trump often likes to celebrate holidays at his Mar-a-Largo resort in Florida. But
on Thursday he remained in the Washington area, spending part of the morning
at his Trump National Golf Club in Virginia where he played a round of golf.
The US is rapidly approaching 13m confirmed Covid-19 infections, and by
Thursday more than 263,000 people in the country had lost their lives to
coronavirus.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/27/donald-trump-says-he-will-leave-white-house-if-
electoral-college-votes-for-joe-biden

3,Violence flares in Washington as far-right

Trump supporters clash with counter-
protesters
Four people reportedly stabbed and 23 arrested in the aftermath of a march
to denounce Joe Biden’s election victory

Martin Farrer

Sun 13 Dec 2020 05.53 GMT

First published on Sun 13 Dec 2020 01.18 GMT

Far-right Trump supporters clash with counter-protesters in Washington – video

Violence has broken out in the streets of Washington DC after far-right groups clashed
with counter-protesters in the aftermath of a march by conservatives protesting against
US president-elect Joe Biden’s election victory.

The trouble flared as darkness fell and crowds began to disperse in the wake of a largely
peaceful demonstration on Saturday by Trump supporters who allege without evidence
that the 3 November election was tainted by fraud.
 Proud Boys and Antifa activists square up in Washington. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty
Images

Groups of pro-Trump Proud Boys protesters and Antifa counter protesters brawled in
the city’s downtown streets and although police used pepper spray on members of both
sides, the rivals regrouped and violence continued sporadically.

Four people were taken to hospital with stab wounds with potentially life-threatening
injuries, according to the Washington Post, which quoted DC fire spokesman, Doug
Buchanan. Police said 23 people were arrested.

An estimated 200 members of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right group, had joined the
marches earlier on Saturday near the Trump hotel in the capital. Mixing with church
groups who urged the faithful to participate in “Jericho Marches” and prayer rallies for
the defeated president, the Proud Boys contingent wore combat fatigues and ballistic
vests, carried helmets and flashed hand signals used by white nationalists.

They shouted insults at rival Antifa protesters and burned Black Lives Matters flags but
police succeeded in keeping the factions apart until the evening

 Rival groups clash in Washington. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

Protests also took place in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and
Arizona, where Trump’s campaign has sought to overturn vote counts.

Local media in the Washington state capital of Olympia reported that one person was
shot and three arrested after clashes between pro- and anti-Trump protest groups.
More than 50 federal and state court rulings have upheld Biden’s victory. The US
supreme court on Friday rejected a long-shot lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by
Trump seeking to throw out voting results in four states.

“Whatever the ruling was yesterday ... everybody take a deep, deep breath,” retired army
general Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, told protesters in front of
the supreme court, referring to the court’s refusal to hear the Texas case.

Flynn who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with the former
Russian ambassador, spoke in his first public address since Trump pardoned him in
November.

 Police stand guard to keep the rival groups apart. Photograph: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

“My charge to you is to go back to where you are from” and make demands, Flynn told
the crowd, without being more specific. The US constitution is “not about collective
liberty it is about individual liberties, and they designed it that way”, he said.

Trump has refused to concede defeat, alleging without evidence that he was denied
victory by massive fraud. On his way to Andrews air force base and then to the annual
Army-Navy football game in New York, Trump made three passes in the Marine One
helicopter over the cheering protesters.

Earlier on Saturday, Trump’s supporters carrying flags and signs made their way in
small knots toward Congress and the supreme court through downtown Washington,
which was closed to traffic by police vehicles and dump trucks.

Few of the marchers wore masks, despite soaring Covid-19 deaths and cases, defying a
mayoral directive for them to be worn outside. Several thousand people rallied in
Washington, fewer than during a similar protest last month.
As some in the crowd echoed far right conspiracy theories about the election, a truck-
pulled trailer flew Trump 2020 flags and a sign reading “Trump Unity” while blaring the
country song “God Bless the USA”.

“It’s clear the election has been stolen,” said Mark Paul Jones of Delaware Water Gap,
Pennsylvania, who sported a tricorner revolutionary war-era hat as he walked toward
the supreme court with his wife.

Some protesters referenced the biblical miracle of the battle of Jericho, in which the
walls of the city crumbled after soldiers and priests blowing horns marched around it.

In his speech, Flynn told the protesters they were all standing inside Jericho after
breaching its walls.

Ron Hazard of Morristown, New Jersey, was one of five people who stopped at the
justice department to blow shofars – a ram’s horn used in Jewish religious ceremonies –
to bring down “the spiritual walls of corruption”.

“We believe what is going on in this county is an important thing. It’s a balance between
biblical values and anti-biblical values,” Hazard said.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/13/trump-supporters-rally-against-election-
outcome-as-proud-boys-and-antifa-face-off

4,Biden hails democracy and rebukes

Trump after electoral college victory
The president-elect repudiated Donald Trump and said his assault on
the democratic process was ‘unconscionable’
Lauren Gambino

 @laurenegambino

Tue 15 Dec 2020 03.32 GMT

Joe Biden delivered a sharp repudiation of Donald Trump and his weekslong

quest to subvert the results of November’s election, declaring that the “will of the
people had prevailed” in a speech that came shortly after the electoral college
officially confirmed his victory.

It was “time to turn the page” on a presidential election that tested the resilience
of American democracy, the president-elect said just moments after Hawaii cast
the final four electoral college votes, clearing a milestone that all but ended
Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn the results.

Biden hailed the presidential election and its uncharted aftermath as a triumph of
American democracy and “one of the most amazing demonstrations of civic duty
we’ve ever seen in our country”.

The final tally – 306 to 232 electoral votes – followed a baseless campaign by the
president to reverse the results of an election that saw historic turnout despite a
pandemic. Trump lost not only in the electoral college but the popular vote, too –
by nearly 7m.

Yet for weeks, the president has clung to meritless accusations of voter fraud in a
slate of battleground states that delivered the victory to Biden. His refusal to
concede has sowed doubt among his supporters about the integrity of the vote
and undermined faith in the institutions of American governance.

In a speech delivered from Wilmington, Delaware, Biden said “our democracy –

pushed, tested, threatened – proved to be resilient, true and strong”.

Biden, who will become the 46th president of the United States when he is sworn
in on 20 January, continued: “We the people voted. The integrity of our elections
remains intact. And so, now it is time to turn the page, as we’ve done throughout
our history – to unite, to heal.”

Since Biden entered the presidential race last year, he has cast the election as a
“battle for the soul” of the nation. In his remarks on Monday night, Biden
described his electoral college victory as a fulfilment of that mission and a
rejection of Trump.

The president-elect called Trump’s assault on the democratic process

“unconscionable” and assailed Republicans who embraced his unsubstantiated
claims about widespread voter fraud. He singled out the 17 state attorneys
general and 126 members of Congress who he said helped legitimize a legal effort
to throw out tens of millions of votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and
Georgia and “hand the presidency to a candidate who lost the electoral college,
lost the popular vote and lost each and every one of the states whose votes they
were trying to reverse”. The supreme court rejected the lawsuit.

These officials, Biden said, adopted a position “so extreme that we’ve never seen
it before – a position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused to
respect the rule of law and refused to honor our constitution”.
Anticipating further resistance from Trump and his allies, Biden noted that the
president and his campaign were “denied no course of action” and stressed that
their efforts failed in states with Republican governors and in courts with
Republican-appointed judges.

“They were heard,” he said. “And they were found to be without merit.”

 Texas presidential electors take the oath of office to cast ballots on Monday. Photograph: Bob
Daemmrich/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

Yet Trump continued to dispute the legitimacy of the election on Monday,

claiming that the result was “RIGGED” due to “massive fraud”. Twitter moved
quickly to label the pronouncements “disputed”. As California’s 55 electors cast
their ballots for Biden, pushing him over the 270-vote threshold to win the White
House, Trump announced on Twitter that his attorney general, Bill Barr, was
resigning, effective 23 December.

Trump had recently lost patience with Barr, viewed as a loyalist who eagerly
advanced the president’s political agenda, after the attorney general
acknowledged that his department had found no evidence of widespread voter
fraud.

In a sign that Republicans were increasingly prepared to accept reality, some

senators and members of Congress acknowledged the electoral college vote.

“The orderly transfer of power is a hallmark of our democracy, and although I

supported President Trump, the electoral college vote today makes clear that Joe
Biden is now president-elect,” the Republican senator Rob Portman, of Ohio, said
in a statement.

Biden thanked the handful of Republican senators who have accepted the
electoral college vote, after resisting his victory for weeks. Ever hopeful that four
years of deep partisan division will yield a new era of bipartisanship, Biden said
he was “convinced we can work together for the good of the nation”.
With the election all but finalized, he called on elected officials to turn to the
“urgent work” of combating the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, the US death
toll surpassed more than 300,000, a grisly reminder on the same day Americans
began receiving the first shots of a vaccine against the virus.

Though the path forward remains challenging, exacerbated by the divisions that
persist, Biden said the electoral college vote should serve as a sign of hope for a
weary nation.

He pointed to the election officials – many of them volunteers – who carried out
their duties in the face of political pressure, threats of violence and, in some
cases, an intervention from the president himself. Their unwavering commitment
to the electoral process ensured that the “flame of democracy” was not
extinguished, he said.

“They showed a deep and unwavering faith in and a commitment to the law,”
Biden said. “They knew the elections they oversaw were honest and free and fair.
They saw it with their own eyes and they wouldn’t be bullied into saying anything
different.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/14/joe-biden-electoral-college-victory-donald-
trump

5,William Barr steps down as Trump's

attorney general
Barr had dismissed Trump’s claims of significant voter fraud
Critics said he made justice department tool of White House

Lauren Gambino in Washington

@laurenegambino
Mon 14 Dec 2020 22.55 GMT
The US attorney general, William Barr, one of Donald Trump’s staunchest
allies, has resigned just weeks after he contradicted the president by saying the
justice department had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that
could change the outcome of the 2020 election.
Barr’s departure ends a tenure marked by brazen displays of fealty to a
president whose political agenda he willingly advanced. Critics said Barr had
turned the Department of Justice (DoJ) into an obedient servant of the White
House, eroding its commitment to independence and the rule of law.

Trump sought to play down tensions as he announced Barr’s resignation in a

tweet on Monday, moments after members of the electoral college officially
pushed Joe Biden over the 270-vote threshold to win the White House on
Monday. The procedural step effectively ends Trump’s unprecedented bid to
overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election based on false claims of
widespread voter fraud that Barr concluded were meritless.
“Just had a very nice meeting with attorney general Bill Barr at the White
House,” the president said. “Our relationship has been a very good one, he has
done an outstanding job! As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before
Christmas to spend the holidays with his family…”

In his resignation letter, released by Trump on Twitter, Barr was

characteristically effusive of the president. He praised Trump’s resilience in
the face of what the attorney general described as a “partisan onslaught” that
aimed to undermine a duly elected president.

“No tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds,” Barr
wrote.

“Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of
relentless, implacable resistance,” he continued, adding: “Few could have
weathered these attacks, much less forge ahead with a positive program for
the country.”

Jeff Rosen, the deputy attorney general, who Trump called “an outstanding
person”, will take over the role of acting attorney general and “highly
respected” Richard Donoghue, an official in Rosen’s office, would become the
deputy attorney general.

Barr surprised many observers by telling the Associated Press in an interview

published on 1 December that he disputed the idea, promulgated by the
president and his re-election campaign, that there had been widespread fraud
in the 2020 election.
Trump has attempted to undermine Biden’s victory by pointing to routine,
small-scale issues in an election – questions about signatures, envelopes and
postal marks – as evidence of widespread fraud across the nation that cost
him the election.
Trump and some of his allies have also endorsed more bizarre sources of
supposed fraud, such as tying Biden’s win to election software created in
Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chávez” – the former Venezuelan
president who died in 2013.

“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be
the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election
results. And the DHS and DoJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t
seen anything to substantiate that,” Barr said in the interview with the AP.

Barr said some people were confusing the role of the federal criminal justice
system and asking it to step in on allegations that should be made in civil
lawsuits and reviewed by state or local officials, not the justice department.

Barr added: “There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as
sort of a default fix-all, and, people don’t like something – they want the
Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate’.”

Those comments infuriated Trump and his supporters as they have tried –
and failed – to find any meaningful way, via the courts, requested recounts, or
pressure on officials, of overturning his defeat by Biden.

Speculation about Barr’s future was rife from the moment his AP interview
was published, as the most high-profile member of the administration flatly to
contradict the president’s continuing arguments that he is the rightful winner.

For months, Barr also kept a justice department investigation into Joe Biden’s
son, Hunter Biden, from becoming public, despite calls from Republicans and
the White House to launch an inquiry into the younger Biden’s business
dealings, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In the weeks before the 2020 election, Trump publicly berated his attorney
general for not prosecuting the president’s political enemies, among them his
Democratic opponent and his predecessor, Barack Obama. In an October
interview, Trump said Barr would be remembered as a “very sad, sad
situation” if he did not indict Biden or Obama. Barr’s refusal to act, Trump
warned then, could cost him the election.
Trump announced in December 2018 that he was nominating Barr to become
his next attorney general, replacing Jeff Sessions, a loyalist who angered the
president when he stepped aside and allowed his deputy to appoint a special
prosecutor to investigate Russia’s election interference.

Barr, 70, had previously served as attorney general in the George Bush
administration and was initially viewed by political veterans in Washington as
a much-needed stabilizing force who would insulate the department from
political attacks. Yet, assuming the post the post as the Russia
investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump 2016 election
campaign and Russian operatives neared its denouement in early 2019, Barr
quickly upended expectations by ferociously attacking the special counsel
investigation that examined the ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.
In his resignation letter, the attorney general said it was the “nadir” of what he
believed was a partisan crusade against the president “was the effort to
cripple, if not oust, your administration with frenzied and baseless accusations
of collusion with Russia”.

Critics have often accused Barr of showing more loyalty to the president than
to the nation. In one such instance, Barr called a press conference last April
and offered a misleading preview of Mueller’s report. He omitted the report’s
detailed description of potential obstruction of justice by Trump and falsely
claimed the White House had cooperated fully.
This set the tone for Trump’s inaccurate trumpeting when the report itself
came out, in restricted form, that he and his team had enjoyed “total
exoneration” by Mueller – a blatant misinterpretation.

And Barr’s protocol-smashing, partisan path continued from there, as he

intervened in criminal cases brought against prominent individuals in
Trump’s circle, such as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.
He also initiated an investigation of the origins of the Russia investigation
itself, seen as a fundamental undermining of the work of Mueller and his
team, an effort that continues.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/14/william-barr-out-attorney-general-donald-trump )
6, Supreme Court rejects Texas' and Trump's
bid to overturn election
(CNN)The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a bid from Texas' attorney general --
supported by President Donald Trump -- to block the ballots of millions of voters in
battleground states that went in favor of President-elect Joe Biden.

The court's order, issued with no public dissents, to dismiss the challenge is the
strongest indication yet that Trump has no chance of overturning election results in
court, and that even the justices whom he placed there have no interest in allowing his
desperate legal bids to continue.
The Electoral College will convene Monday to affirm Biden's win.
The lawsuit, brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a staunch Trump ally, sought to
sue Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin -- which all went for Biden -- and invalidate
their election results. And this week, with his options narrowing, Trump, accompanied by the
support of several Republican attorneys general and GOP lawmakers, cranked up pressure to
have the Supreme Court weigh in.
"From a legal perspective, the fat lady has sung," said Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court
analyst and University of Texas Law professor.

Trump and his legal team -- hamstrung by a series of coronavirus diagnoses among
lawyers who had traveled across the country advocating on behalf of Trump's case -- have
for weeks pushed increasingly desperate appeals and baseless conspiracy theories about
his second term being stolen.
"The Supreme Court really let us down. No Wisdom, No Courage!," Trump tweeted around
midnight. Mike Gwin, a spokesman for Biden's campaign, said the decision was "no
surprise."
Paxton, calling the court's order "unfortunate," vowed to fight on.
"I will continue to tirelessly defend the integrity and security of our elections and hold
accountable those who shirk established election law for their own convenience," he said in
a statement.
Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg said Trump's crusade to undermine the election's
results through rhetoric and court challenges "put a huge stress test on our democracy."
"The Republicans who did follow Donald Trump really have an obligation now to make the
country strong again, to heal the chinks that Donald Trump tried to put in the foundation of
the country and the democracy," Ginsberg told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room."
Texas denied for lack of standing
The court's order Friday night was unsigned, and court did not provide a vote count, but
there were no dissents to the order made public.
In its short order, the court said that Texas had not demonstrated that it had the legal right
to bring the suit because it had not demonstrated a "judicially cognizable interest in the
manner in which another State conducts its elections."
The order states: "The State of Texas's motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied
for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a
judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All
other pending motions are dismissed as moot."
In a statement accompanying the order, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said
they would have allowed the case to be filed, but would grant no other relief.
"Even Justice Thomas and Alito, who might otherwise have been sympathetic to these
challenges, went out of their way to express that they would grant no relief on the merits,"
Vladeck said.
"Not only did the Court reject Texas's effort to challenge the results in four battleground
states, but it did so on a ground that will prevent any other states from doing so," Vladeck
added.

Another big loss for Trump

For the past five weeks, federal and state courts have rejected most of Trump's attempts
thoroughly.
Hastily-written filings have contained a multitude of elementary errors. Many of the pro-
Trump arguments hinged on what was ultimately hearsay or conjecture. And in many of the
cases, Trump backers have said they don't have evidence proving their allegations yet, but
want to review ballots or confidential elections data more closely to see if they can find proof
of fraud.
And though Trump has refused to move on, those closest to him -- including the legal team
and his family -- are working on their next steps.
Multiple sources told CNN earlier this week that Trump's legal team and inside what
remains of his campaign staff have been sensing that efforts to overturn or delay the results
of the election are coming to an end. White House staffers are resigning or are out the door,
and members of Trump's Cabinet have also begun meeting with their Biden administration
counterparts.
First lady Melania Trump, meanwhile, has begun overseeing shipments of family furniture
and art to Mar-a-Lago. And Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are in the final stages of
purchasing a plot of land within a Miami enclave known for its privacy and high net worth
residents.

Presidential pressure
Hours ahead of the court's decision, the President called on the Supreme Court to intervene
in the election, but seemed to acknowledge that a Biden administration is on its way.
"Now that the Biden Administration will be a scandal plagued mess for years to come, it is
much easier for the Supreme Court of the United States to follow the Constitution and do
what everybody knows has to be done. They must show great Courage & Wisdom. Save
the USA!!!" Trump tweeted Friday morning.
Each of the four battleground states targeted by the lawsuit -- Georgia, Michigan,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- issued blistering briefs on Thursday, with Pennsylvania
officials going so far as to call the effort a "seditious abuse of the judicial process."
And although the case started off with Texas challenging four states, it grew into a
dispute featuring some 19 Republican attorneys general siding with Texas and 22
Democratic-led states and territories supporting the battleground states that Biden won.
In addition, 126 House Republicans signed on to an amicus brief in support of Paxton's
motion, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Still, several Republican lawmakers in Washington slammed the basis of the suit, citing
federalism concerns and saying Texas shouldn't have a say in how other states hold their
elections.
This story has been updated with additional details, background information and reaction.
CNN's Caroline Kelly contributed to this report.

(https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/11/politics/supreme-court-texas-trump-biden/index.html)

7,'I won't vote next time': could

Georgia Republicans' doubts cost
them the runoffs?
As Trump relentlessly pushes false claims of fraud, some fear lower turnout –
while poll workers fear for their safety
Oliver Laughland in Atlanta and Sam Levine in New York
Sun 13 Dec 2020 07.30 GMT
As the sun dipped on a crisp autumnal evening in southern Georgia, Lauren Voyle stood in line
for a front-row seat on the makeshift risers at the Valdosta regional airport. Donald Trump was
due to arrive on the tarmac in a few hours’ time.

It was the first time the president would hold a rally since losing the election in
November and Voyle, who wore a blue Trump 2020 cap with the slogan “Keep Liberals
Crying” on the rim, had driven four and a half hours from Cumming, a small city in the
northern part of the state, to witness what she described as a historic moment.

The president had ostensibly travelled to Georgia to canvass for the two Republican
senate candidates, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, before a critical runoff election in
January. But he spent the vast majority of an incoherent, 90-minute monologue
spreading baseless disinformation about a rigged election, continuing to claim victory
after losing by more than 7 million votes. Georgia election officials, meanwhile, have
done three separate counts of the presidential vote, each time confirming Biden’s victory
in the state.

Donald Trump attends a rally in support of the senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. Photograph:
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Some national Republicans fear that Trump’s continued denial of the results could have
major consequences for the party in January, when this Senate election will determine
control of the upper chamber. With over 70% of Republicans, according to recent
polling, now believing that November’s presidential election was not “free and fair”,
there are concerns that a collapse in trust in electoral processes could cost conservatives
dearly at the ballot box.
With the Senate election likely to be decided by a thin margin – both Democratic
candidates, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, are slightly ahead, according to recent
polls – even a small drop in turnout on either side could have significant consequences.
In many ways, Voyle was the embodiment of their worst nightmare: a staunch
Republican who would not turn up to vote again.
“We really believe this election was crooked,” said the 57-year-old, who voted in the
November election. “I won’t [vote] next time unless they give us a clean election with
paper ballots, IDs and fingerprints. I’m not doing Dominion machines.”

Although Trump urged supporters during his speech to turn out for Loeffler and Perdue,
he also regurgitated many of the conspiracy theories about Dominion voting software
and identification issues that Voyle described.

Of the dozen people interviewed by the Guardian at Trump’s rally, all said they had
mostly stopped watching Fox News, which faced the fury of Trump after accurately
calling the election for Joe Biden, shifting their attention to Newsmax and the One
America News Network, two fringe channels propagating baseless election fraud claims
recently championed by the president.

Even among some of those who did plan to vote, there remained a distinct lack of
enthusiasm for the two Republican Senate candidates without Trump on the top of the
ticket.

“I’m not feeling it for either of them, but I’ll vote,” said Tammy Bailey, who had driven
three hours south to attend in person. She added: “I feel like they’re both part of the
deep state,” suggesting neither candidate had shown enough support for Trump’s efforts
to subvert the election results.

The rally came before a crucial runoff election for Perdue and Loeffler on 5 January. Photograph:
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Loeffler and Perdue have walked a rhetorical tightrope during their second election
season, on the one hand declining to articulate the full-throated, baseless claims of
widespread fraud that Trump has propagated while on the otherdeclining to recognize
Biden as the president-elect and offering their backing for desperate legal bids to
overturn the result.
On Sunday, during a televised debate, Loeffler, a multimillionaire
businesswoman, declined three times to acknowledge the result, instead arguing that
Trump had “every right to every legal recourse”.
Democrats in the state are quietly confident that this confusing messaging will play into
their hands. “While they’re scrambling to make clear sense to their base, our message is
clear and unified,” said one source close to the Ossoff campaign.

In his effort to undermine Georgia’s election results, Trump has also attacked two of the
top Republicans in the state, Governor Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger, the
secretary of state. Despite Trump’s howling, both men have refused to acquiesce to his
request and Raffensperger has loudly dismissed allegations the election was rigged
against Trump. Raffensperger has said that Trump’s own criticism of voting by mail cost
him the election in Georgia.

Asked whether the president’s attacks were hurting Republicans’ chances of winning the
runoff, Raffensperger told the Guardian it would be “helpful” to separate the general
election and the coming vote.

“The most helpful thing for the senators is obviously to have everyone focused on them
getting re-elected in the runoff election,” Raffensperger said. “It’s very tough, I
understand, to really bifurcate the issue of the presidential race from the senatorial
runoffs, but the better that the state party and the candidates do that, the better it really
is.”

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, in Atlanta on 7 December. Photograph: Erik S

Lesser/EPA

“I would never tell anyone not to turn out to vote. I don’t know why someone would do
that. All the true blue, or I guess true red Republicans, we’ll be all out there, making sure
that we vote for our senators,” he added.

Raffensperger, who certified Georgia’s election results for Biden last month, has
received threats against him and his family for doing so, and urged leaders from both
sides “to condemn violence and threats of violence”.
The attacks have also made it harder for local election officials to prepare for the runoff.
Janine Eveler, the director of elections and registration in Cobb county, which
encompasses the Atlanta suburbs, said she had been getting about 50 calls and emails a
day from people concerned about the election.
“It has taken away time that we could be working on the election to field all of their
questions,” she said, adding that it was extremely difficult to convince the callers there
had not been fraud. “They are unwilling to listen to any rebuttal of that. It’s fruitless.
You can’t really explain anything to anybody because they’re not willing to listen.”

Eveler said the attacks had taken a toll on election workers. She said her office
had lost about 15 workers for the runoffs, which she attributed to a combination
of concerns about Covid, burnout, and the attacks.
“The public scrutiny over things, the accusations of wrongdoing that we’ve endured is
very discouraging to people,” she said. “They don’t make a lot of money. And they’re
working really hard. And to be accused of fraudulent activity, it’s hard for people. Their
pictures are in the newspaper all the time, counting ballots.”

The lack of staffing has also meant Cobb county has had to cut by half the number of
early voting sites for the runoff, a move that drew strong objections from civil rights
groups who said the few sites that were available were not adequately accessible for
minority voters. Cobb county is one of the largest in Georgia, home to more than
537,000 registered voters, and flipped to Biden in November – the first time the county
had chosen a Democratic candidate in 40 years.
Eveler acknowledged the accessibility was a problem and said the county was moving
one site and working on a plan to ramp up staffing and open two additional locations
during the final week of early voting.

Republicans in the Georgia state legislature have already signaled they intend to use the
uncertainty Trump created around the election to implement new restrictions on voting
by mail. State Republicans said this month they planned to move legislation that would
require photo ID with a mail-in ballot, eliminate ballot drop boxes and require an excuse
to vote by mail – a rule that exists in just a handful of states.
Jon Ossoff bumps elbows with Julián Castro during a Latino voter registration event in Lilburn, Georgia,
on 7 December. Photograph: Dustin Chambers/Reuters

“I can’t understand why all of a sudden now we have to have these barriers to vote by
mail,” said Helen Butler, executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s
Agenda, a civil rights group that helps expand access to the polls. “When the other side
used it – and I’m just gonna be honest, more white people used vote by mail than people
of color, because they didn’t trust the process – now that we’ve got them trusting the
process, now they want to go in and change the rules.”

National Democrats, too, see Trump’s efforts to undermine the process as a long-term
danger to democracy across the country, which could extend well beyond the election in
Georgia.

At an Ossoff campaign rally in the city of Lilburn, just outside Atlanta, Julián Castro, the
former presidential candidate and US housing secretary, paused in the cold to reflect on
the post-election circus.

“The attacks that Donald Trump is launching against the basic foundations of our
democracy are dangerous. They are the types of things that can weaken the common
agreement we all have of participating in democracy, believing in it, supporting it and
abiding by it,” he told the Guardian.

“All because this man acts like a child and can’t put the needs of the country above his
own selfish needs.”

• This article was amended on 13 December 2020 because an earlier version misspelt
the city of Cumming as Cuming.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/13/georgia-senate-runoff-election-republicans-fraud-
claims

8,Top Trump ally Chris Christie says it's time to

accept Biden won the election
By Paul LeBlanc, CNN
Updated 0304 GMT (1104 HKT) December 18, 2020
Washington (CNN)Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a staunch ally of President
Donald Trump, said Thursday evening it's time to accept that Joe Biden won the 2020
election as the President continues to push baseless conspiracy theories that his second
term is being stolen.

"Whenever anybody loses an election -- party, an individual -- there is great disappointment. But
elections have consequences and this one was clearly won by President-elect Biden by the
same margin in the Electoral College that President Trump won four years ago -- by even more,
nearly double the popular vote," Christie told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "Prime Time."
"This election, there has been no evidence put forward that has shown me as a former
prosecutor that there is any fraud that would change the results of the election. It's time for us to
accept that defeat. Also, by the way, accept the many victories we had that night. Fourteen new
House members, two legislatures at the state level switched, and a governorship flipped to the
Republican party."
"We had a great night except at the top of the ticket," he continued. "So we need to accept that
and we need to move on."
The comments from Christie, who previously derided Trump's legal team as a "national
embarrassment," come as a growing number of high-profile Republicans acknowledge Biden's
victory and refer to him accurately as "President-elect."

"The Electoral College has spoken," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the
Senate floor earlier this week, adding, "Today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe
Biden."
But a wide swath of Republicans on Capitol Hill are still siding with Trump or ignoring
his daily conspiracy theories altogether. And the President's staunchest defenders are
urging him to fight his loss all the way to the House floor in January.
It is not unusual for a losing candidate's most fervent supporters to take their case to the
House floor -- something that occurred after the 2016, 2004 and 2000 presidential
races. But it is unusual for the losing candidate to mount a weeks-long public campaign
aimed at sowing discord and distrust over a pillar of democracy, something that Trump
has done relentlessly since losing the race.
Pressed Thursday on being perceived as disloyal to the Republican Party because of
his comments, Christie offered: "I am a person who relies on the facts."
"The facts are that every one of these lawsuits has been thrown out of court, not
because these judges and certainly not the justices of the Supreme Court lacked
courage. It's because the claims lacked evidence," Christie said.
"You got to fight based on the facts," he added, "and so name calling won't change
anything at this point."
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/17/politics/chris-christie-us-election-cnntv/index.html

9,Supreme court rejects Republican bid to

overturn Biden's Pennsylvania victory
Lawsuit filed on behalf of Republican congressman took issue with
2019 state law that expanded mail-in voting

Sam Levine in New York and agencies

Wed 9 Dec 2020 00.04 GMT

The US supreme court on Tuesday turned away a long-shot bid by Republicans to

overturn the election results in Pennsylvania, where Joe Biden defeated Donald
Trump in the 2020 race.

The suit, filed on behalf of Mike Kelly, a Republican congressman from

Pennsylvania, took issue with a 2019 state law that adopted no-excuse absentee
voting, and argued that the expansion of mail-in voting was illegal.

Several courts, including the Pennsylvania supreme court, had already denied the
request, noting that Kelly waited until after the 2020 election to file his suit when
the law was in place well before the election.

The case is the first piece of 2020 election litigation to reach the US supreme
court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority including three Trump appointees.
But the decision is not a surprise. As is customary with emergency requests, the
supreme court did not offer an explanation for its decision. There were no noted
dissents.

Pennsylvania was one of the pivotal states in the election, with Biden, a
Democrat, defeating Trump after the Republican president won the state in 2016.
State officials had already certified the election results.

Trump has falsely claimed that he won re-election, making unfounded claims
about widespread voting fraud in states including Pennsylvania. Democrats and
other critics have accused Trump of aiming to reduce public confidence in the
integrity of US elections and undermine democracy by trying to subvert the will
of the voters.
“This election is over. We must continue to stop this circus of ‘lawsuits’ and move
forward,” the Pennsylvania attorney general, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, wrote on
Twitter.

The supreme court also must decide what to do with another election-related case
brought on Tuesday. Republican-governed Texas, hoping to help Trump,
mounted an unusual effort to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania and
three other states – Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin – by filing a lawsuit against
them directly at the supreme court.

The Republican plaintiffs argued that the universal, “no-excuse” mail-in ballot
program passed by the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania legislature in 2019,
enabling voters to cast ballots by mail for any reason, violated the state’s
constitution.

Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes and received a much higher proportion
of the mail-in votes than Trump. Many more people voted by mail this year
because of health concerns prompted by the coronavirus pandemic as they sought
to avoid crowds at polling places.

Ahead of the election, Trump urged his supporters not to vote by mail, making
groundless claims that mail-in voting – a longstanding feature of American
elections – was rife with fraud.

Pennsylvania said in a court filing that the Republican challengers were asking
the justices to “undertake one of the most dramatic, disruptive invocations of
judicial power” in US history by nullifying a state’s certification of its election
results.

The state said most of what the challengers had sought was moot because the
election results already were certified and what they were really wanted was for
“the court overturn the results of the election”.

Trump’s campaign and his allies have lost in a stream of lawsuits in key states
won by Biden, also including Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and others. Judges
have rejected sweeping assertions of voting irregularities.

Biden has amassed 306 electoral votes – exceeding the necessary 270 –
compared with 232 for Trump in the state-by-state electoral college that
determines the election’s outcome, while also winning the national popular vote
by more than 7m votes.

Tuesday represents a “safe harbor” deadline set by an 1887 US law for states to
certify presidential election results. Meeting the deadline is not mandatory but
provides assurance that a state’s results will not be second-guessed by Congress.
After this deadline, Trump could still pursue lawsuits seeking to overturn Biden’s
victory but the effort would become even more difficult.

Reuters contributed to this report

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/dec/08/us-supreme-court-republican-pennsylvania-election-
results-trump

10,‘Will he ever concede?’: Trump keeps

GOP leaders in endless political limbo
Republicans in Congress cling to hope that electoral college event
will prompt Trump to admit to the realities of the election results

The majority of Republican voters who think the election was fraudulent, despite no
supporting evidence, is still growing. Photograph: Erin Scott/Reuters
Tom McCarthy and agency
@TeeMcSee
Wed 9 Dec 2020 20.38 GMT

First Republicans in Congress gave Donald Trump a week to admit he lost

the presidential election. Then they called for the lame duck president to have
his day in court, where the Trump campaign amassed a 1-51 win-loss record in
challenging Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.
Next Republicans pointed to the so-called “safe harbor” deadline of 8
December, when states would certify their respective results, as the date when
Trump would surely be forced to admit his loss. But that deadline came and
went on Tuesday, seemingly unnoticed by the White House.
Now, it is beginning to dawn on some members of the Republican leadership
that Trump is working on a calendar all his own, and that the political limbo
they now inhabit – unable to take the basic step, as elected officials in the
United States of America, of recognizing the rightful winner of a free and
fair election – might never end, assuming they will not summon the courage to
contradict Trump.
“I don’t know that he’s ever gonna concede,” John Thune, the Senate majority
whip, told Politico on Wednesday. More than 200 Republicans in Congress –
about 90% of the total – will not say publicly who won the presidential
election, the Washington Post found.

The Republican silence has given Trump a window to expand his attacks on
US democracy. The president’s tweeted lies about fake election fraud have
escalated in the last month to include the simple message on
Twitter “#OVERTURN”.
The majority of Republican voters who think the election was fraudulent,
despite findings to the contrary by Trump’s own administration and no
supporting evidence, is still growing.

The high stakes are plain. As Trump himself put it on Wednesday: “How can
you have a presidency when a vast majority think the election was RIGGED?”

Some Republicans cling to hopes that upcoming events in the transfer of

power – future dates on the election calendar – will cause Trump to change
course, and relax the pressure on them. Next Monday, 14 December,
the electoral college meets to cast votes based on state certifications of the
result.
On 6 January, Vice-President Mike Pence, in his capacity as president of the
US Senate, is to preside over a ceremonial meeting of a joint session of
Congress at which the electoral votes are added up and Joe Biden is formally
declared the next president.
Representative Alex Mooney, a Republican from West Virginia who
introduced a House resolution on Tuesday that encourages neither Trump nor
Biden to concede until all the investigations are completed, expressed faith
that the congressional count would convince Trump and end the silence of his
colleagues.

“The end is when the roll call is put up here,” Mooney told the Associated
Press.

But the five weeks since the election are littered with flawed speculation
by Republicans about the supposedly imminent moment when Trump would
admit reality and they could safely follow suit.
“I think the goal here is to give the president and his campaign team some
space to demonstrate there is real evidence to support any claims of voter
fraud,” one senior Senate Republican aide told Reuters on 10 November. “If
there is, then they will be litigated quickly. If not, we’ll all move on.”
“At some point this has to give,” a second aide told Reuters at the time. “And I
give it a week or two.”
The result is a risky standoff like none other in US history. The refusal to agree
upon the facts of the election – which was called for Biden by the leading
media decision desks, including the Associated Press and, thereby, the
Guardian, on 7 November, threatens to undermine voter confidence, chisel
away at the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency and re-stack civic norms.
Trump sent his party down this unprecedented path by claiming the election
was “rigged”, but Republican leadership has enabled doubts to swell through
their past four weeks of silence.

The president has personally called on some local elected officials to

reconsider the results. Now, the disputed election has taken on a political life
of its own that the party’s leadership may not be able to squash, even as
Trump’s legal challenges crumble and state and national level officials
declared it the most secure election in US history.
Republicans say it makes little political sense at this point for them to counter
Trump’s views lest they risk a backlash from his supporters – their own
constituents – back home.

They are relying on Trump voters to power the Georgia runoff elections on 5

January that will determine control of the Senate. And while some GOP
lawmakers have acknowledged Biden’s victory, most prefer to keep quiet,
letting the process play out “organically”, as one aide put it, into January.
But election experts warn of long-term damage to the long-cherished
American system.

“It clearly hurts confidence in the elections,” said Trey Grayson, the
Republican former secretary of state for Kentucky and a past president of the
National Association of Secretaries of State.

“My hope,” he said, is by 14 December “there will be some more voices, but my
gut is it won’t be until the 6th” (of January).

Edward Foley, an elections expert and constitutional law professor at Ohio

State University, said it was true that the election winner is not officially the
president-elect until the Congress declares it so with its vote on 6 January to
accept the electoral college results.

“I’m less concerned about the timing, but that it happens,” he said.

For Americans to “have faith” in the elections, the losing side has to accept
defeat. “It’s very, very dangerous if the losing side can’t get to that,” he said.
“It’s essential for the parties to play by that ethos – even if one individual, Mr
Trump, can’t do it, the party has to do it,” he said.

“What’s so disturbing about the dynamic that has developed since election day
is that the party has been incapable of conveying that message because they’re
taking their cues from Trump.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/09/trump-republicans-presidential-election-joe-
biden

11, Trump 'penned political suicide note' at

every Covid press conference, former
Australian PM says
If US president handled coronavirus pandemic ‘half-decently’ he
would have won election, John Howard says

Donald Trump was headed to election victory until the pandemic hit, the former
Australian PM John Howard has said. Photograph: Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images
Katharine Murphy Political editor
@murpharoo
Wed 16 Dec 2020 16.30 GMT
The former Australian prime minister John Howard has said Donald
Trump penned a lengthy “political suicide note” with his “terrible” handling of
the coronavirus pandemic, without which the Republican would have
prevailed against Joe Biden.
Howard, who led a conservative Coalition government for nearly 12 years,
made the remarks on Wednesday night during a question and answer session
at the Menzies Research Centre at the conclusion of a lecture delivered by the
former National party leader John Anderson.
“If Donald Trump had handled the pandemic half-decently he would have won
the election,” Howard said.
“He was headed towards a victory until the pandemic hit. It was his
mishandling of that because, in the end, the public, when threatened, want
their leaders to defend them against the threat.”

Howard said competent public health responses had increased the popularity
of political leaders across Australia.

“That’s why Scott Morrison has very high approvals, Gladys Berejiklian has,
our friend [Mark McGowan] in Western Australia has, and even our friend in
Victoria [Daniel Andrews] is surviving – he’s more than surviving, politically,
he is quite perpendicular at the present time,” the former Liberal leader said.
“Now part of that is a perception that difficult as it all was, and so forth, he got
the show through.”
Howard noted that Andrews, the Labor premier in Victoria, had been “open to
a lot of political attack”.

“I know this is not a political occasion so I shouldn’t join in that attack,” he

said.

“But I think there’s something to be said for the proposition – and this is an
optimistic thing in a way – that the side of politics in America that embraced
identity politics far more, namely the Democratic party side, sure Biden won,
but given how appallingly Trump handled the pandemic how could he not
win?

“Every time [Trump] had a news conference he was penning a political suicide
note.”

Howard, Australia’s prime minister from 1996 to 2007, said Trump’s handling
of the pandemic was “terrible” but still the Republicans did “far better than
many people expected” in Congress.
Anderson’s lecture to the Liberal-aligned thinktank on Wednesday night railed
against “wokeness” and identity politics.

Despite Biden’s resounding victory both in the electoral college and the
popular vote, Howard said he detected a backlash in “middle America” which
prevented the Democrats from gaining control of the legislature.

“I draw a little bit of encouragement from that, not in a partisan sense – I am

more sympathetic to the Republicans than I am to the Democrats – but I think
probably there was a middle America rejection to be found in that election
outcome, notwithstanding the fact that [Biden] won and I think you are
starting to see it reflected in Biden’s choice of people who will serve in his
administration – they are not as leftwing and embracing of political
correctness as you might expect.”

Anderson agreed with Howard’s thesis and declared the media in Australia
and the US were preoccupied with characterising Trump as a “terrible person”
rather than analysing his policies.

The former Nationals leader and deputy prime minister did not reflect on
Trump’s habitual lying while in office or the scandals that ultimately defined
his presidency.

Anderson noted that an “astonishing” number of Americans voted for Trump

despite the mismanagement of Covid-19. Howard said in response to that
observation: “He did have a number of flaws.”

And Anderson said the looming runoff election in the state of Georgia was “a
very important runoff for the globe – I mean what happens in American
politics at this point in history is probably as important to us as what happens
here”.

“I’m so motivated by what I see as the real potential for us to lose our
freedoms,” Anderson said. “I’m so despairing at our lack of, am I allowed to
say, manning up.”

After deciding he should instead say “humanising up” – “there’s a touch of

wokeism in everyone” – Anderson concluded by stating that when it came to
the defence of freedom “it’s all hands to the wheel”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/17/trump-penned-political-suicide-note-at-every-
covid-press-conference-former-australian-pm-says

12,Loeffler leaves open the option of objecting

to the Electoral College results
By Ryan Nobles, CNN
Updated 0006 GMT (0806 HKT) December 17, 2020
(CNN)Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Georgia Republican who is up for reelection in a heated runoff
race set for January 5, left open the possibility Wednesday that she may object to the
Electoral College results of Joe Biden's victory when the matter is brought before the US
Congress next month.

"January 6 is a long ways off; right now we've got a Senate race to run here in Georgia," Loeffler
said. "We've got to win. The future of the country is on the ballot. I'm focused on making sure
that we win that, to hold the line here in Georgia against the radical left, the democrat socialist
policies, and that's what I'm doing every single day."
When pressed if she was leaving the option open, Loeffler responded: "I haven't looked at it.
January 6 is a long way off; there's a lot to play out between now."
Loeffler, who is being challenged by the Rev. Raphael Warnock, also refused to call Biden the
President-elect during a short news conference after she cast her ballot Wednesday morning for
the Georgia races. She deflected or ignored several direct questions about the results of the
presidential election, claiming she was focusing all of her energy on the January 5 runoff.
"The President has a right to every legal recourse," she said. "That's what's playing out right
now. I'm focused on winning this race on January 5."

Both GOP candidates in the Georgia runoff have found themselves in a difficult position as
they attempt to fire up Republican base voters to participate in the runoff, which is expected
to be very close.
Their efforts have been complicated by President Donald Trump, who, despite endorsing
Loeffler and GOP Sen. David Perdue, has spent much of his time challenging the results of the
presidential race in Georgia and attacking leading Republicans who oversaw the voting process
and confirmed the results.
Perdue and Loeffler have leaned in to the President's attacks without specifically endorsing
them. During her last debate with Warnock, Loeffler refused to describe the November election
as "rigged" but also declined to say that Biden was the winner.
Warnock quickly pounced on Loffler's comments Wednesday, accusing her of disrespecting
voters in Georgia.

"After refusing for weeks to acknowledge the basic fact that Joe Biden and Kamala
Harris won the election, Kelly Loeffler is now leaving the door open to challenging those
results in Congress," Warnock said in a statement. "That's reckless and disrespectful of
Georgia voters."
Republican voters in Georgia have put an enormous amount of pressure on Loeffler and
Perdue to demonstrate support for Trump's ill-fated quest to overturn the results. Some
have interrupted their campaign stops demanding they do more to stand up for Trump.
When the pair appeared onstage with Trump during a rally in Valdosta, the crowd
erupted in a chant of "Fight for Trump."
It's left Loeffler and Perdue in a situation where they been forced to wade carefully
through the sensitive issue and commit full loyalty to Trump, despite the reality of the
results of the presidential race. So much so that when Loeffler was asked Wednesday if
she will ever concede that Biden won the election she responded:
"Look, there will be a time for that, if that becomes true."
Loeffler may have a say on January 6, win or lose. Because she is filling a seat vacated
by the retirement of Sen. Jonny Isakson, she will remain in office until the results of the
runoff are certified by the Georgia secretary of state. That could take a week or longer,
depending on how long it takes to count all the votes. It is likely that even if she is the
apparent loser, she may still be a member of the Senate when Congress convenes to
take up the Electoral College results.
(https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/16/politics/kelly-loeffler-electoral-college/index.html )

13,Trump's fraud claims undermine

democracy, ex-US election security chief
says
Chris Krebs, who was fired from Department of Homeland Security
two weeks after the election, calls Trump’s actions dangerous

Chris Krebs on Capitol Hill in Washington DC on 14 May 2019. Photograph: Shawn

Thew/EPA
Martin Pengelly in New York
@MartinPengelly
Mon 30 Nov 2020 15.51 GMT
Donald Trump and his allies are “undermining democracy” with evidence-free
claims of fraud and conspiracy, the former head of US election security said on
Sunday, discussing the effort he led before he was fired by the president.
“What I saw was an apparent attempt to undermine confidence in the election,
to confuse people, to scare people,” Chris Krebs told CBS 60 Minutes.
Trump called the interview “ridiculous, one-sided [and] an international joke”,
as he continued to tweet conspiracy theories and baseless claims of electoral
malpractice.
Trump lost the electoral college to Joe Biden by 306-232, the result he said
was a landslide when it was in his favour over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden is
more than 6m ahead in the popular vote and won the support of more than
80m Americans, the most of any presidential candidate.
Trump belatedly allowed the transition to proceed but has not conceded
defeat, despite his team having won one election-related lawsuit and lost 39.
Relaying baseless claims to reporters over the Thanksgiving holiday, the
president did say he will leave the White House if the electoral college is
confirmed for Biden. It votes on 14 December, a result certified on 6 January.
Inauguration day is 20 January.
Krebs, 43, was fired as head of the Department of Homeland Security’s
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) two weeks after
election day. Two days after that, at Republican National Committee
headquarters in Washington, the Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani gave a press
conference in which he and then team member Sidney Powell pushed Trump’s
false claims.

“It was upsetting,” Krebs told CBS.

“It’s not me, it’s not just Cisa. It’s the tens of thousands of election workers out
there that had been working nonstop, 18-hour days, for months. They’re
getting death threats for trying to carry out one of our core democratic
institutions, an election. And that was, again, to me, a press conference that …
didn’t make sense. What it was actively doing was undermining democracy.
And that’s dangerous.”

Trump tweeted in response, part of a stream of Sunday night messages.

“There is no foreign power that is flipping votes,” Krebs said. “There’s no
domestic actor flipping votes. I did it right. We did it right. This was a secure
election.”

Claims by Trump lawyers of interference from Venezuela or China were

“farcical”, he said, adding: “The American people should have 100%
confidence in their vote.”

Polling, however, shows a majority of Republicans believe the president. Krebs

defended state officials who Trump, and subsequently his supporters, have
targeted.
“It’s in my view a travesty what’s happening right now with all these death
threats to election officials, to secretaries of state,” Krebs said.

“I want everybody to look at Secretary [Kathy] Boockvar in Pennsylvania,

Secretary [Jocelyn] Benson in Michigan, Secretary [Barbara] Cegavske in
Nevada, Secretary [Katie] Hobbs in Arizona. All strong women that are
standing up, that are under attack from all sides, and they’re defending
democracy. They’re doing their jobs.
“Look at Secretary [Brad] Raffensperger in Georgia. Lifelong Republican. He
put country before party in his holding a free and fair election in that state.
There are some real heroes out there. There are some real patriots.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/30/trump-election-fraud-claims-aim-chris-krebs

14,William Barr says there is no

evidence of widespread fraud in
presidential election
By Evan Perez and Devan Cole, CNN
Updated 2247 GMT (0647 HKT) December 1, 2020
(CNN)The Justice Department hasn't found evidence to support allegations of widespread
fraud that could have changed the result of last month's presidential election, Attorney
General William Barr said in an interview with the Associated Press published Tuesday.

The comments from Barr, who has been steadfast in his support of President Donald Trump
during his tenure, represent the latest official rebuke from Republicans of the President's claims
of widespread fraud in his loss to Joe Biden.
"To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the
election," Barr said.
Barr, who prior to the election echoed Trump's claims that mail-in voting wasn't secure, said
both the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security have looked into claims
of fraud and come up empty.
"There's been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that
machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results," Barr said. "And the DHS
and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven't seen anything to substantiate that."

Barr's announcement came the same day he publicly revealed he appointed Connecticut
US Attorney John Durham to act as special counsel investigating whether intelligence and
law enforcement violated the law in investigating the 2016 Trump presidential campaign --
essentially keeping that issue alive into the Biden administration.
Trump and his attorneys are still pursuing desperate legal challenges to the 2020 election
results in some key states, despite the fact that a number of them have already certified their
results.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said Monday that his state's elections were secure, drawing
condemnation from the President.
"I've been pretty outspoken about Arizona's election system, and bragged about it quite a bit,
including in the Oval Office," the Republican governor tweeted in part, praising the state's
election laws and practices as secure and empowering to voters. Biden beat Trump by 10,457
votes in Arizona, the secretary of state's office said.
And last week, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia's secretary of state rejected Trump's
calls for them to overturn the state's election results after they were certified. Trump has made a
series of unfounded claims of fraud in the state, for which there is no evidence, and he lost the
state to Biden by more than 12,000 votes. Trump has criticized Kemp for how he handled the
state's recount.
Barr had previously pushed similar claims to the ones Trump has repeatedly made, including in
September, when he made a number of false and misleading statements to CNN's Wolf
Blitzer in an interview in which he condemned states using mail-in voting during the coronavirus
pandemic.
"People trying to change the rules to this, to this methodology -- which, as a matter of logic, is
very open to fraud and coercion -- is reckless and dangerous and people are playing with fire,"
Barr said at the time.
Barr's comments will almost certainly raise questions about Trump's relationship to his attorney
general moving forward, especially given the fact that Chris Krebs, the official running the cyber
arm of the Department of Homeland Security, was jettisoned by the President because of a
statement he released saying Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud were "highly
inaccurate."
Barr went to the White House on Tuesday for a pre-planned meeting with chief of staff Mark
Meadows, an official told CNN.

Two attorneys working for Trump swiftly rejected Barr's assessment on Tuesday, repeating
their claim that they have "ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states," which they
say the attorney general isn't privy to.
"With the greatest respect to the attorney general, his opinion appears to be without any
knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud,"
attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in a statement.
This story has been updated with additional information on Barr's actions.
CNN's Caroline Kelly, Katelyn Polantz and Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/01/politics/william-barr-election-2020/index.html )

15,Brazil and Mexico presidents recognize

Biden's victory after facing criticism
Jair Bolsonaro and Andrés Manuel López Obrador both
acknowledged Democrat’s win after six-week hesitation
Jair Bolsonaro in Brasília, Brazil, on 23 October. Photograph: Adriano
Machado/Reuters
Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro and David Agren in Mexico City
Tue 15 Dec 2020 21.20 GMT
The populist leaders of Brazil and Mexico have both finally recognized Joe
Biden’s election victory after facing heavy criticism for their six-week
hesitation.

“Greetings to President Joe Biden with my best wishes and the hope that the
US continues to be the land of the free and the home of the brave,” the
Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, a pre-eminent Donald Trump admirer,
tweeted late on Tuesday afternoon. “I will be ready to work with the new
government.”
Earlier Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president, sent the US
president-elect a lukewarm two-page letter which contrasted with the
enthusiastic seven-page missive he sent Trump after his own election in 2018.
Advertisement
López Obrador’s decision had left Bolsonaro as the most prominent member
of a tiny band of holdouts still declining to endorse the result.The Russian
president, Vladimir Putin, also congratulated Biden on Tuesday, wishing the
president-elect “every success”.
Rubens Ricupero, Brazil’s former ambassador to the US said he believed most
Brazilian diplomats were aghast at Bolsonaro’s delay in recognizing Biden’s
win. “It’s a lunatic reaction that is utterly lacking in any kind of diplomatic
logic … Any diplomat with their head screwed on knows this is madness,”
Ricupero said.

Even Brazil’s vice-president, Hamilton Mourão, had appeared perplexed.

Before Bolsonaro’s announcement on Tuesday, Mourão shrugged when
quizzed by journalists over his boss’s motives, answering: “I don’t know.”
Guga Chacra, a US-based foreign affairs commentator for Brazil’s GloboNews
network, said he believed Bolsonaro was moved by genuine admiration for
Trump, who he often cites as an inspiration.

“He hasn’t not congratulated Biden because he has anything specific against
him, but because he truly idolizes Trump. He admires him and perhaps feels
he owes his [2018] victory to Trump.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, Narendra Modi and Mohammed bin Salman had all
recognized Biden’s win despite their warm ties with Trump, Chacra pointed
out. “But for them Trump was more of an ally. For Bolsonaro it’s about
idolatry. He’s a Trump fan – and he’s not ashamed of it.”

Amlo’s letter thanked Biden for his positive attitudes toward Mexican

migrants and his willingness to promote development in southern Mexico and
Central America to slow outward migration.
But the Mexican president also sent a subtle warning to Biden, writing: “We
have the certainty with you in the [US] presidency it will be possible to
continue applying the basic principles of foreign policy established in our
constitution; especially that of non-intervention.”

Amlo had previously defended his refusal to congratulate Biden by arguing it

adhered to Mexico’s policy of non-intervention in foreign affairs. But he also
appeared to give credence to the US president’s unsubstantiated claims of
fraud, saying he was waiting for the resolution of any legal challenges.
“Having read AMLO’s congratulatory letter to Biden, I can only say it would
have been better if he had not congratulated him,” tweeted Gabriel Guerra
Castellanos, a former Mexican diplomat. “If someone from this side of the
border doesn’t intervene, we will have four icy years in the US-Mexico
relationship.”
Despite Trump’s discourteous comments toward Mexican during his
improbable rise to power, Amlo and the US president developed an unlikely
relationship.

Writing to Trump after his own election in 2018, Amlo presented himself as a
fellow populist – and signed off with abrazos (hugs) as opposed to the more
formal un saludo (regards) he directed at Biden.
“I am encouraged by the fact that we both know how to fulfill what we say and
we have faced adversity successfully,” he told Trump. “We managed to put our
voters and citizens at the center and displace the political establishment.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/15/mexico-amlo-lopez-obrador-congratulates-joe-
biden
16,Electoral college vote may be knockout
blow to Trump's ploy to subvert election
Formality to cement outcome of election takes on real political
significance as Trump continues efforts to undermine results

Ed Pilkington
@edpilkington
Mon 14 Dec 2020 10.41 GMT

Donald Trump on Monday could suffer a withering blow to his increasingly hopeless
effort to overturn the results of the US presidential election when 538 members of the
electoral college will cast their ballots and formally send Joe Biden to the White House.

Under the arcane formula which America has followed since the first election in 1789,
Monday’s electoral college vote will mark the official moment when Biden becomes the
46th president-in-waiting. Electors, including political celebrities such as both Bill and
Hillary Clinton, will gather in state capitols across the country to cement the outcome of
this momentous race.

Normally, the process is figurative and barely noted. This year, given Trump’s volatile
display of tilting at windmills in an attempt to negate the will of the American people, it
will carry real political significance.

Trump continued those quixotic efforts over the weekend, sparking political unrest in
several cities including the nation’s capital. On Sunday morning he tweeted in all caps
that this was the “most corrupt election in US history!”.
In an interview with Fox & Friends that aired on Sunday, he insisted that his anti-
democratic mission was not over. “We keep going and we’re going to continue to go
forward,” he said, before repeating a slew of lies about the election having been rigged.
Trump’s barefaced untruths about having won key states including Pennsylvania and
Georgia went entirely unchallenged by the Fox News interviewer, Brian Kilmeade.

Any faltering hopes Trump might still harbor of hanging on to power were shattered on
Friday when the US supreme court bluntly dismissed a lawsuit led by Texas to block
Biden’s victory in four other states. In a different case, a Wisconsin supreme court judge
decried Trump’s lawsuit aiming to nullify the votes of 200,000 Americans, saying it
“smacked of racism”.
Despite the categoric rebuff that Trump has suffered in dozens of cases, including before
the nation’s highest court, his unprecedented ploy to tear up democratic norms
continues to inflict untold damage on the country with potential long-term
consequences. The Texas-led push to overturn the election result was backed by
126 Republicans in the House of Representatives – almost two-thirds of the party’s
conference – as well as Republican state attorneys general from 18 states.
Among the wider electorate, a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 77% of
Republicans believe – mistakenly – that there was widespread voter fraud in the 3
November election.
Another manifestation of the harm that is being done was the violence that erupted on
Saturday night across several cities. In Washington DC, four people were stabbed and
required hospital treatment, and 23 were arrested, when far-right groups clashed with
counter-protesters following a so-called “Stop the Steal” march enthusiastically
endorsed by Trump.
Far-right militia groups mingled among the Trump supporters and engaged in the
violence, including the white nationalist Proud Boys who call themselves “western
chauvinists”. Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who Trump
pardoned for lying to the FBI, addressed a crowd, exclaiming: “We decide the election.
We’re waging a battle across America.”
Violence also broke out in Olympia, the state capital of Washington state. One person
was shot in clashes between heavily armed factions, with Trump supporters and Proud
Boys facing off against counter-protesters, and three people were arrested.
Video footage appeared to show that the shot was fired by a member of the Proud Boys
and that the victim was a counter-protester, although details remained sketchy.
In Georgia, a separate militia group, Georgia Security Force III%, were in attendance at
a far-right rally at the statehouse on Saturday. The armed group has helped to organise
recent caravans that have intimidated local election officials at their homes claiming
falsely that Biden’s victory in Georgia was fraudulent.
Biden’s transition team has watched with growing alarm the spate of violent incidents
that has cropped up around Trump’s spurious claims of a rigged election. Cedric
Richmond, a Democratic representative from Louisiana who Biden has tapped as the
incoming director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, said they were
anxious about what lay ahead in the holiday season.

“We are concerned about violence,” he told Face the Nation on CBS News. “Where
there’s violence it is not protest, that is breaking the law, so we are worried about it.”

Asked about the majority of House Republicans who backed Trump’s frivolous lawsuit
to block election results being certified, Richmond implied their resistance was more
theatrical than real. “They recognize Joe Biden’s victory. This is just a small proportion
of the Republican conference that is appeasing the president on his way out because
they are scared of his Twitter” feed.

The outlier nature of Trump’s stubborn refusal to concede was underlined on Sunday by
Al Gore in an interview with CNN’s State of the Union. Exactly 20 years ago to the day,
he conceded the bitterly-fought 2000 presidential race to George W Bush, saying: “This
is America, we put country before party – we will stand together behind our new
president.”

Gore told CNN that he hoped Monday’s electoral college vote would be the beginning of
healing. He called the lawsuit dismissed by the supreme court “ridiculous and
unintelligible”, and castigated those Republicans who continued to stick with Trump in
his “lost cause”.

“With the electoral college votes tomorrow in all 50 states, I hope that will be the point
at which some of those who have hung on will give up the ghost,” Gore said. “There are
things more important than bowing to the fear of a demagogue.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/13/us-election-electoral-college-vote-biden-trump

17, All 50 states and DC have

now certified their presidential
election results
By Liz Stark and Ethan Cohen, CNN
Updated 0228 GMT (1028 HKT) December 10, 2020
(CNN)All 50 states and the District of Columbia have now certified their presidential results,
according to CNN's tally, as the Electoral College process moves forward with the meeting
of electors on Monday.

West Virginia became the final state to certify its presidential election results
Wednesday, formally declaring that President Donald Trump is entitled to the state's five
electoral votes.
President-elect Joe Biden is projected to win 306 electoral votes, and Trump is
projected to win 232. It takes 270 electoral votes of the 538 available to become
president.
The states' certifications come as Trump has baselessly claimed that the election was
rigged and sowed doubt about the outcome of the presidential race. Dozens of lawsuits
challenging the results have been dismissed at the state and federal levels across the
country since the November election.
Each state has different processes for certifying results, and some states certified their
slate of presidential electors separately from state and local election results.
The next major step in the Electoral College process is the meeting of the electors, who
are required by law to convene on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in
December, which this year is December 14. The electors' votes are later transmitted to
officials and counted in a joint session of Congress on January 6.

Some states have laws that seek to bind their electors to the winning
candidate and in some instances stipulate that so-called "faithless electors"
may be subject to penalties or replaced by another elector. The Supreme
Court ruled this summer that such laws punishing members of the Electoral
College for breaking a pledge to vote for the state's popular vote winner are
constitutional.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/09/politics/2020-election-results-certified/index.html

18,Biden hopes to complete

Cabinet picks by Christmas
By Kate Sullivan and Jeff Zeleny, CNN
Updated 2132 GMT (0532 HKT) December 10, 2020

Washington (CNN)President-elect Joe Biden's goal is to have his remaining Cabinet

selections announced before Christmas, a transition official told CNN, with no plans of
delaying any decisions until the outcome of the Georgia runoffs determines control of the
Senate.

This is contingent on Biden making up his mind and not delaying decisions on his picks, as
he hears criticism and suggestions from outside supporters and advocates.
Several announcements are expected next week. CIA director is expected to be at the
beginning of the week, with others grouped together later.
The timing of an attorney general announcement remains unclear, with sources offering
conflicting indications of when it will happen. A separate source on Thursday insisted Biden
has yet to reach a final decision, but others believe he has. The four finalists are Alabama
Sen. Doug Jones, Merrick Garland, Sally Yates and Deval Patrick, with Jones and Garland
seen as the top two options.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, the President-elect announced a slate of new Cabinet nominees
and picks for top roles in his administration, including Denis McDonough for secretary of
Veterans Affairs, Tom Vilsack for Agriculture secretary and Marcia Fudge for secretary of
Housing and Urban Development.
Biden tapped Susan Rice, former national security adviser during the Obama
administration, as his director of the Domestic Policy Council. The President-elect also
announced Katherine Tai, who oversaw trade enforcement for China during the Obama
administration, as his nominee for United States Trade Representative. All of Biden's picks
announced Thursday except Rice will require confirmation by the United States Senate to
serve in their roles.
Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are expected to introduce these key
administration members at an event on Friday in Wilmington, Delaware, the transition
team said. CNN had previously reported all of these administration picks.
The picks reflect how Biden is turning to longtime advisers and experts in their
respective fields for top posts in his administration. Many have close ties with Biden,
and developed relationships with the President-elect while working in the Obama
administration.
"This dedicated and distinguished group of public servants will bring the highest level of
experience, compassion, and integrity to bear, solving problems and expanding
possibilities for the American people in the face of steep challenges," Biden said in a
statement.
The President-elect continued, "The roles they will take on are where the rubber meets
the road — where competent and crisis-tested governance can make a meaningful
difference in people's lives, enhancing the dignity, equity, security, and prosperity of the
day-to-day lives of Americans. This is the right team for this moment in history, and I
know that each of these leaders will hit the ground running on day one to take on the
interconnected crises families are facing today."
Vilsack served as agriculture secretary for the entirety of President Barack Obama's
time in the White House. He was unanimously confirmed by the US Senate in January
2009 and served in that post until he stepped down in 2017, shortly before President
Donald Trump took office. Vilsack is also the former governor of Iowa -- in 1998, Vilsak
became the first Democrat elected governor of Iowa in more than 30 years. He served
as governor from 1999 to 2007. 
McDonough was a longtime chief of staff to former President Barack Obama. He served
as chief of staff during Obama's entire second term and also worked as deputy national
security adviser. McDonough developed a close relationship with Biden while serving in
both positions. He also chaired the National Security Council's Deputies Committee,
which is responsible for formulating the administration's national security and foreign
policy.
Fudge has represented Ohio's 11th Congressional District since 2008. She serves on a
number of committees, and previously chaired the Congressional Black Caucus. Prior to
running for Congress, Fudge made history as the first woman and first African American
to be elected mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio.
Rice was thought to be a contender to be Biden's vice president or secretary of state.
First Obama's UN ambassador and then later his national security adviser, Rice has a
long and close relationship with Biden and has deep foreign policy experience. She also
served in Clinton's administration as the special assistant to the president and senior
director for African affairs at the White House, the assistant secretary for the Bureau of
African Affairs at the State Department and the director of international organizations
and peacekeeping at the National Security Council. 
Tai is seen as an expert on China trade policy, and if confirmed by the Senate, would be
the first woman of color to serve as USTR. She is currently the top Democratic trade
counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee. Tai played a key role in negotiating
trade policy for Democrats in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which
came under Trump's administration and replaced the North American Free Trade
Agreement.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/10/politics/biden-new-cabinet-picks/index.html )

19,Biden nears record 80m votes as Trump

persists in trying to overturn result

Rising Biden tally and his popular vote lead overshadowed by

Trump escalating his false insistence that he actually won

Joanna Walters in New York and agency

 @Joannawalters13
Thu 19 Nov 2020 18.40 GMT
Joe Biden is approaching a record 80m votes, with ballots still being counted and
having already recorded the highest number of votes for a US presidential
election winner, as Donald Trump persisted on Thursday in denying the result
and trying to overturn it.

In a gigantic turnout of the US electorate, Trump has now got a record number of
votes for a losing candidate.

With more than 155m votes counted and California and New York – Democratic
bastions – still counting, turnout stood on Thursday at 65% of all eligible voters,
the highest since 1908, according to data from the Associated Press and the US
Elections Project.

The rising Biden tally and his popular vote lead – nearly 6 million votes – has
been overshadowed by Trump escalating his false insistence that he actually won
the 3 November election and his campaign and supporters now intensifying
efforts to stop or delay results being certified by state officials.

“It’s just a lot of noise going on, because Donald Trump is a bull who carries his
own china shop with him,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice
University. “Once the noise recedes, it’s going to be clear that Biden won a very
convincing victory.”

Indeed, some experts are saying that the way the lame duck president is digging
in on his false claims of victory and an election stolen from him by widespread
fraud, as all the while his legal challenges fall one by one is actually serving to
entrench his failure.

“Each [legal] loss further cements Biden’s win,” said election law expert Richard
Hasen, Axios reported on Thursday.

But Trump’s last ditch could also be dangerous.

“History shows that any leader who constructs a major myth, that is later shown
to be false, will eventually fall,” Harvard science historian and Merchants of
Doubt author Naomi Oreskes further told Axios.

She added: “The risk is that he takes his country down with him.”

Trump has made up to 30 legal challenges so far and by Thursday morning, more
than two weeks after the polls closed for in-person voting and the bulk of mail-in
ballots were received, 19 of those lawsuits had been denied, dismissed, settled or
withdrawn, NBC reported.
He is fighting the result in various ways in Pennsylvania, which tipped the
election to Biden when it was declared for the Democrat on 7 November and he
passed the crucial 270-electoral college vote mark, also in Georgia, Michigan,
Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona.

Biden currently has an electoral college lead of 290-232. But that does not
include electors from Georgia, where Biden leads Trump by 0.3 percentage points
as officials conduct a hand tally which concluded on Wednesday night with every
expectation that Biden would be confirmed the winner on Thursday.

The Associated Press, the news agency whose projections of winners in each state
are followed by the Guardian, had not called the race in Georgia on Thursday
morning, even though CNN has already called it for Biden.

If Biden’s lead holds he will win the electoral college that determines the victor
for the White House with 306 votes to 232 for Trump – the identical margin
Trump won in 2016 over Hillary Clinton, which he then described as a
“landslide”.

On Thursday, Trump mounted an all-out assault on the election result in

Michigan, reportedly planning to fly state lawmakers to meet with him in
Washington and phoning county officials in an apparent attempt to derail the
certification of Biden’s 150,000-vote victory in the state.

Some analysts believe the noise and confusion being generated by Trump is an
end in itself, and sowing chaos is the goal rather than a real attempt to overturn
an election Trump – and increasingly those around him – must know he has lost.

“This is all about maintaining his ego and visibility,” said Judd Gregg, the former
Republican governor and US senator from New Hampshire.

He added: “He’s raising a lot of money and he intends to use it.”

The scenario of confusion and doubt is exactly what Trump spent much of 2020
laying the groundwork for, particularly with his unfounded claims that mail-in
ballots would be subject to systemic fraud. That wasn’t true before 2020 or in this
election.

“His response should surprise no one. He foreshadowed it well before the election
and it continues his pattern of declaring victory, regardless of the actual facts,”
said Tim Pawlenty, the former Republican governor of Minnesota.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/19/biden-latest-votes-record-amid-trump-legal-
challenges
20,Biden's search for an
attorney general complicated by
'competing questions'
By Jeff Zeleny, Dan Merica and Ariane de Vogue, CNN
Updated 2322 GMT (0722 HKT) December 17, 2020
Washington (CNN)The deliberations among President-elect Joe Biden's tight circle of
advisers about whom he should nominate as attorney general have emerged as some of
the more complicated of the transition, sources familiar with the process tell CNN, with
possible investigations into President Donald Trump, a federal probe into Hunter Biden's
business dealings and pressure from powerful outside groups hanging over the process.

The discussions inside the transition team are down to a series of front-runners, people familiar
with the search tell CNN, with Judge Merrick Garland and Alabama's Sen. Doug Jones seen as
the two most likely choices. A final decision is not expected until next week.
In Garland, Biden's team sees someone who is unimpeachable and politically independent at a
time when rebuilding trust in the Department of Justice will be critical and a number of thorny
political issues could cross the attorney general's desk. Jones, on the other hand, has a strong
civil rights background and is seen as far closer to Biden, although that relationship could raise
questions about his ability to impartially oversee a department that is actively investigating the
incoming president's son.
"Those are the competing questions," a person following the transition closely tells CNN.
"Someone perceived as above reproach or someone closer to Biden."

Sources told CNN that while Garland and Jones are currently seen as the leading
contenders, it's always possible that Biden will take a second look at former acting
Attorney General Sally Yates or former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
None of Biden's earlier Cabinet picks were made in a vacuum and all have been subject to
both internal and external pressures. But the choice of attorney general has been more
fraught, underscoring the tug of war that has come alive inside the Democratic Party, with
civil rights groups and progressives working hard to influence Biden's decision.
Because many of the people being considered for attorney general are White, sources said
there is a desire inside Biden's orbit to roll out selections for other top Justice Department
jobs, including possibly deputy attorney general and the head of the department's civil rights
division.
While many Cabinet picks have been longtime advisers and loyalists to Biden, people
familiar with the matter say the choice of attorney general is being viewed in a different light,
in part because of the newly announced federal probe into Hunter Biden's business
dealings in China, which was launched before the election but did not become public until
earlier this month.
Even before the federal probe was announced, the President-elect and chief of staff Ron
Klain were said to be looking for someone who appeared above political reproach when
making decisions about Trump-era investigations in the Department of Justice under the
Biden administration.
Garland is see as someone who would lead the department without political influence, but
he does little to excite liberals and would open up a seat on a key court.
"Harry Reid went nuclear in 2013 to enable Obama to fill seats on the DC Circuit Court of
Appeals, widely seen as the 2nd highest court in the land," tweeted Brian Fallon, the
executive director of the liberal advocacy group Demand Justice, who previously worked at
the Department of Justice. "Opening up Garland's seat on that same court, when there are
plenty of other perfectly good AG picks, would be most unfortunate."
Jones is far closer to Biden and has a strong civil rights record from his prosecution of Ku
Klux Klan members in Alabama but is inherently more political, given he is finishing his term
as a Democratic senator.
And his relationship with Biden, while a selling point for the President-elect, could be used
by Republicans to question his impartially.
Jones declined to discuss Biden's attorney general selection or the conversations he's had
about the job while walking to Senate votes on Wednesday. Asked about the calls for a
special counsel on the Hunter Biden investigation, Jones said, "I don't think that would be
appropriate for me to comment."
Jim Cole, a former deputy attorney general, said knowledge of politics is "not always a
complete disqualifier or a bad thing."
"One of the things the attorney general has to deal with is politics," Cole said. "You are
going to have to deal with politics one way or another. It is not that you are going to be
guided by politics, but you need to understand them."
A focus on someone who is impartial is partly borne out of Democratic reaction to Trump,
who regularly leaned on the Justice Department both publicly and privately to advance
some of his political goals.
"I'm not going to be telling them what they have to do and don't have to do," Biden said of
his attorney general pick in an interview with CNN. "I'm not going to be saying, 'Go
prosecute A, B or C' -- I'm not going to be telling them. That's not the role. It's not my
Justice Department, it's the people's Justice Department."
And at an event over the summer, Biden said the attorney general is "not the president's
private lawyer."
"I will not interfere with the Justice Department's judgment of whether or not they think they
should pursue the prosecution of anyone that they think has violated the law," he said.
Garland does not have a particularly close relationship with Biden, but the argument being
made on his behalf includes that he is a universally respected jurist whose previous tenure
at the Department of Justice reflects that he knows the department well and would be able
to navigate the need to remain independent from the White House on prosecution matters
and align with it on important policy agenda items.
Jones, however, has a far stronger background on civil rights. He previously worked as the
US attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and was the lead prosecutor suing KKK
members responsible for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.
Several civil rights leaders have implored Biden to select a person of color to lead the
Justice Department, given the forceful calls for racial justice after a remarkable year of
protests and police brutality.
"We are in an era of heightened alert in the areas of race and criminal justice," the Rev. Al
Sharpton, who leads the National Action Network, told CNN earlier this month. "And
anything that does not recognize that means that people who voted for him, feeling he
would deal with this issue, will feel a sense of betrayal."
Sharpton has said, however, that he is comfortable with Jones because of the senator's
record on civil rights.
For weeks, a small group of advisers on Biden's transition team has been poring over
Garland's rulings and statements. He was closely vetted four years ago as a Supreme Court
nominee in the Obama administration -- a nomination that was never taken up by
Republicans in the Senate -- but the cases are being reviewed again to avoid any surprises
in today's more fractured Democratic Party.
Progressive groups bemoaned Garland's centrist reputation in 2016, with many still blaming
former President Barack Obama for choosing a nominee seen as more palatable to
Republicans than some Democrats. Now the Biden transition team is beginning to work to
try to answer progressive leaders' concerns about Garland -- should Biden choose him.
"Millions of people did not protest for racial justice this summer for the next attorney general
to have opinions on criminal justice reform to the right of the average Democrat," said
Waleed Shahid, spokesman for the liberal Justice Democrats.
The decision on an attorney general was always expected to be one of the last Cabinet
picks Biden made, given the critical importance in the post-Trump era and his long tenure
on the Senate Judiciary Committee. But as the Biden transition has been stung by a series
of leaks around other Cabinet picks, the conversations around those selections have gotten
smaller and smaller, a source said. The hope is that Biden will be able to announce the
name before Christmas.
CNN's Nicquel Terry Ellis, Sarah Mucha and Jeremy Herb contributed to this report.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/16/politics/biden-attorney-general/index.html